Watching the Essendon vs Collingwood warm up it occurred to me that a factor in our demise has been our failure to receive players from the GWS and Gold Coast diaspora. A fair chunk of the recent draft bounty over three last five years has passed through those clubs and we've received none of it. Trading in ready made guns like Trelor, Shiel, O'Meara, Lynch makes a huge difference. All picked big destination Melbourne clubs. Losing COLA was disaster in that regard. Haven't landed anyone of note since it was removed.
Let's hope names like Gulden, Ellem, Raynor and Blakey compensate.
I was thinking the same, how the Melbourne clubs have robbed the northern clubs blind. Like Hawthorne getting Scully, O'Meara and Scrimshaw.
Collingwood got: Taylor Adams, James Aish, Beams, Crisp, Hoskin-Elliot and Treloar.
Essendon got: Saad, Shiel and Devon Smith.
It makes things a lot easier when you can get access to so many good players.
We can't complain too much. We got Buddy and a lot of very good players from other clubs before that. But that was the end of it for us for 6 years. And we haven't gone after players from the other northern clubs. I think it's time to get going again in the post season. Hopefully we have a good base with our drafted players and we just have to fill a couple of gaps to make us contenders again.
Listening to the Age AFL podcast. Last year Tim Kelly wanted to be traded back West but refused to be traded to Freo. This week, apparently his manager was touring their facilities.
Which demonstrates that players are primarily motivated by success, which would make the current Swans a lot less appealing than the 2016 or even 2018 version.
Caroline Wilson has a bee in her bonnet that the Swans not a happy club right now, which would make sense on one level simply because we’re losing. She implied it goes deeper than that.
She said Gary Rohan had said his last year was like “walking on eggshells”
See there have been suggestions in both the Age and Hun that we swap coaches with North. They get Longmire and we get Scott!
Those who have the greatest power to hurt us are those we love.
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