Here is a thread on bigfooty discussing which clubs are most in trouble 'age-wise':
Which team is in most trouble age wise - 2018 edition | BigFooty AFL Forum. The author (a Swans' fan) has nominated the Swans as among the most in danger and respondents to the accompanying poll have voted us third in terms of most problematic age profile (with 12.8% behind Geelong (35.2%) and West Coast (15.8%)).
Personally I disagree with this. While we have the equal most players aged 29 and over on our list (7, equal with Hawthorn) we are well advanced in our succession planning for most of these positions and, in my opinion, only in the case of Buddy, Joey and Reg (in that order) will experience a clear net loss compared to their replacement if they can't play. Buddy is irreplaceable and will certainly be a massive loss when he loses form or fitness. Joey is peerless at what he does but has years left in him, I would think, and we have numerous other players that play a similar role just not quite as well (Hewett is coming along beautifully - but who's next? Dawson?). Reg is coming towards the end but currently playing at career-best levels and we have Melican being groomed to replace him with Aliir, AJ, Maibaum in the wings (and it remains to be seen of what becomes of players like McCartin, Pink and Amartey all of whom have the height to play KPD even if that is not what they currently do).
Conversely a lot of our best players are relatively young (Hanners, Parks, Ramps, Heeney, Lloyd) and we have also gotten games, sometimes many games, into a lot of even younger players (Hayward, Florent, Papley, Mills, Jones, Hewett, Aliir etc.) with Dawson, Ling et. al. to follow. And we have numerous other young players who offer depth and who have games in them as well as years: Cunningham, Robinson, Marsh, Foote, Fox etc etc.
So, personally, I feel like our age profile is close to perfect. You need a few olders leaders, which we have, we have the bulk of the team in their prime and the next generation well under development with lots of youngsters and budding project players too. So I would put us at the opposite end of this list to RUNVS and bigfooty posters (since when have they had a trusted opinion anyway?!). What do others think? Is anyone concerned?
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