Why trade away so many picks?

[farquhar]

I think the club has got ahead of itself. We look like a club topping up for a premiership window when we are anything but that. We are a bottom tier club. And there are no shortcuts.

But we have decided to take some shortcuts in the time honoured manner of trading draft picks.

Shouldn't the club be looking at kids in the draft, and not giving away future draft picks on 1 player. Where is the critical thinking?

I am not thrilled by what has just gone on.

Yes, the players coming in are good players.
Yes, the Saints will move up the ladder with a few more wins.
Yes, there is excitement with a good quality coach.
Yes, membership and sponsorship will be easier to sell on the back of all this.
No, we are not likely to win the flag this year or next.

I am worried the club has taken a short term view. Just because you can trade a lot of picks does not mean you should. I'd be happier to see improvement through proper identification of talent through the draft.

And those who say this is not a strong draft year are the people who really know nothing about football. There are good players out there not in the AFL system such as the Richmond Grand Final debutant. But is much more exciting to be trading picks and in the cut and thrust of the trade period. Well done.

[skeptic]

I’m actually leaning away from this model to a degree

The idea is to bring players into the club that can play and play for an extended period...
Doesn’t matter if they’re drafted or traded.

It seems like Dougal, Jones and Hill fit that bill as guys top 22 guys that could play for 5+ years.

The challenge with the draft is that it’s a lottery and one that we haven’t done particularly well at over some years albeit there are exceptions

About the only top up player we got is Ryder whereas Butler is anyone’s guess
Hannebery also is a questionable choice but was pbly at least an upgrade on Armitage but that’s about it

[freely]

It's a vote of no confidence in our ability to develop players. Maybe that vote is justified. I would prefer it if we developed our ability to develop players - that would be a route to sustained long-term improvement imo.

[Nick_BlueNRG]

Our "successful" period from 2004 until 20011 was due to hitting the draft hard for 4 years and then doing some trades. This rebuild we have butchered most of our draft picks yet we are acting as though we are a top 4 side and topping up. It's not going to work. You must build that core group through the draft first. We haven't done that.

[desertsaint]

carrying on from last year, if you compare the two then:

2018 traded in hannebury (experienced once elite, injury concerns) and kent (fringe forward)
2019 traded in ryder (experienced once elite, injury concerns) and butler (fringe forward)
2018 drafted in older quicks hind, parker, and young back prospect wilkie
2019 traded in older quicks jones, hill, and young back prospect howard

Difference is in who we traded out.
2018 Hickey. poor performer but left us exposed in the ruck. lucky Roma stepped up big time
2019 Bruce. good performer and leaves us exposed at chf... fingers crossed. and Acres (likely fringe 2020)

And how we are left in the draft,
2018: on top of parker, hind, and wilkie (rookie draft) we still had:
pick 4 King (injury concerns), pick 41 Bytel (injury concerns), pick 67 Young.
2019 : picks 51 and 82.

So a quick comparison (ommitting less relevant)
2018 In: Hannebury, Wilkie, Hind, Parker, King, Bytel Out: Hickey
2019 In: Hill, Howard, Jones, Ryder, Butler Out: Bruce, Acres

[older saint]

Next years draft is compromised by the number of Academy and Father son players .

We needed to increase talent in the age demographic of 24-28 with quality .

Howard (bit younger ), Jones and Hill all fit this
Ryder is a 2 year stop gap before King and Marshall develop further
Butler is a cheap throw at the stumps.

Add to first round picks last 2 years of King, Coffield and Clark and looks like a sensible strategy to me

[longtimesaint]

This strategy has worked well for Hawthorn and Geelong and allowed them to stay near the top for more than a decade.
It’s important to retain the first pick but next year looks thin after that.

[saintsRrising]

Why trade away so many picks?

1/ When your list is bad as ours had become just trying to improve from kids in the draft is a huge task, and will most likely take so long that you will never get there.

2/ GWS had vast numbers of quality picks, way more than we will ever had, and had the advantage of seeing what GC did wrong and it has still taken them a lengthy time to make their first GF. Though they now look for a contender for a while.

3/ Meanwhile picks are being thrown at GC to give them another crack at getting past us. But even with this they are not just taking youth.

4/ Football has changed. Less and less players will stay at clubs their full careers and as we have just seen players like Bruce /Lynch will swap clubs to play finals. So with any player you get assuming that you have them for long durations is not is not good planning. So for example we could could keeping picking good youth and then may just leave us after 2 or 4 years anyway.

5/ St Kilda are not actually topping up

Most of our traded in players are young to youngish. Gaining Ryder is an outlier as we only had one ruck on our list entering the draft. So he meets short-term need. The others gained this year so far are all of benefit both immediately and long-term.

We are yes looking to be better in 2020, and a real threat in 2022.

If you look at our list that will enter 2020, all bar 2 (If Brown goes) or 3 players that will be remaining on our list can play 4 or more years.

The vast majority of players can now play considerably more seasons. There is now a real bulge in the 21 to 26 age bracket (see graphic) who can now push forward together, and be added to each season improve quality.

This is why it is not topping up and is rather providing the foundation that we can continue to improve from.

Each year we can keep adding players. Both draftees and trades to improve that bulge of players. We now have very few old players that we will lose over the next 4-6 seasons, and so this means that we will instead mainly be losing our worst players each year.

Graphic Courtesy of Saint believer from BigFooty



For a while now we have been chasing our tail and losing good players at a faster rate than we have been gaining them.

This year's trading gives is a chance to reverse that an establish a period of continue improvement.

It also provides the benefit of making us more competitive in the immediate term. This in turn should help in attracting other players going forward.

6/ The 2020 draft is supposedly a) a weaker draft and b) heavily compromise with almost 20 Academy and F/S players likely to go in the first 3 rounds.

b) It is great if you are a club with these players (ie Dogs look to have 3 good players coming to them in 2020), but St Kilda is not and so this actually devalued our second and third round picks in particular and possibly (depending on where we finish), though to a lesser, extent our first round pick.

So it actually made sense to trade out our 2020 2nd and 3rd rounders and to get more talent in this year, and in our case this was by trading for players and not 2019 draft picks.

[Gershwin]

List Manager has made it clear that we are looking for a Premiership in the short to mid term. Ie. 2022. 18 year olds drafted this year would not help us much with that objective.

[WellardSaint]

This strategy has worked well for Hawthorn and Geelong and allowed them to stay near the top for more than a decade.
It’s important to retain the first pick but next year looks thin after that.

But those two were near the top already.
Huge difference

[The Fireman]

i'm happy to see us win games.....pretty simple really

[BarryGrogan]

List Manager has made it clear that we are looking for a Premiership in the short to mid term. Ie. 2022. 18 year olds drafted this year would not help us much with that objective.

I don't necessarily think so.

Our list was terribly imbalanced. It can take years to balance it up.

I don't see how our list is less of a 'long term' one since trade period.

It certainly should be better in the short term, but with the profile of the guys we traded in - only 2 will be over 30yo in 5 years.

Unless something unforeseen happens - 4 of the 5 will be in our best 22 in 5 years. Whereas with 4 kids taken beyond pick 30 in the draft, you're looking at about a 15% strike rate of them being any good.

Just cause they're young, doesn't mean they'll be in your 22 in the long term.

[skeptic]

I think the key thing ppl are missing is that we’ve brought in 3 5season+ players in one off-season period.

That’s a win.

You’d be rapt if u drafted that... so what’s the difference

[degruch]

We've been playing the long game since 2011, it just hasn't worked. At some stage the club needed to boost onfield leadership, introduce some 'mentors', generate a culture of success and stimulate memberships and sponsors with some wins...it won't happen by bottoming out and heading to the draft each year. Carlton, Suns anyone? This was really the only way for the club to proceed.

[Darth Vader]

It’s been nearly 20 years since we successfully built a side using the draft/develop our own method and even then we brought a lot in. Happy to try something different.

[cwrcyn]

In the draft you are working with probabilities. Outside the top ten pick pick you will get a hit rate of about 50% for players picked between 11 and 30. From 31 to 50 it drops away, with one in three players making it , and after that it's about one in 4.

We've given up a top ten pick, two second rounders, and two third rounders. Obviously, Hill represents the first rounder, and he's guaranteed quality. Now, if you get Howard and Jones for the second rounders, then you're doing far better than the typical hit rate. For the third rounders we get Butler and Ryder, which is again better than the hit rate for that round.

Realistically, given our recruiting history, we would be able to secure one high quality player and a couple of average players with those picks, for a total of three senior players. In giving up those picks we've secured 5 players. One is a star, another two are slightly above average, and a couple who are average or just below. However, all are useful AFL footballers. Drafting with those picks would most likely result in a worse outcome overall

[Yorkeys]

Ok so what picks would you retain?
The question is clearly rhetorical/argumentative/even gratuitous - what is the opportunity cost(s) you object to - not a hypothetical, nominate a draft player/players better value than we got and the flow on impact on the package achieved.
Forum is disappearing up its own yeah but no orifice. Contrarianism is not debate.

[farquhar]

It's a vote of no confidence in our ability to develop players. Maybe that vote is justified. I would prefer it if we developed our ability to develop players - that would be a route to sustained long-term improvement imo.

Ace Frehely makes a very good point, our player development has been poor. I see this as a mixture of poor quality coaching and a lack of investment as the club has struggled financially. If player development can be improved the entire team will improve and this is both obvious and basic. It must be the club’s focus.

[farquhar]

It's a vote of no confidence in our ability to develop players. Maybe that vote is justified. I would prefer it if we developed our ability to develop players - that would be a route to sustained long-term improvement imo.

Ace Frehely makes a very good point, our player development has been poor. I see this as a mixture of poor quality coaching and a lack of investment as the club has struggled financially. If player development can be improved the entire team will improve and this is both obvious and basic. It must be the club’s focus.

[cwrcyn]

You can compare the last two seasons to the early 2000s when we picked up Fraser Gehrig (West Coast), Luke Penny (Bulldogs), Brett Voss (Brisbane), Brent Guerra (Port Adelaide), Jason Gram (from Brisbane), Sam Fisher (mature age South Australian). We gave up a few second rounders for those players and for the most part it worked out well

[cwrcyn]

Yorkeys.......I'm not sure I undersand what you're getting at

[axcellence]

The draft was the greatest equaliser in footy.

So, the big clubs went at it and so:-

No more priority picks (except when it is Melbourne tanking or QLD clubs)

Academy zone for all clubs. Guess who Pies drafted in round 1 despite the player not really being NGA likely.

Regular raids to GWS and GCS lists making sure the big club lists are topped without needing the draft.

This time, Saints are targeting making the 8. As no player wants to come to a club which isn’t playing finals. Like a chicken and egg paradox.

[Spinner]

We’ve kept a lot of our picks recently.

Hill committing was definitely the time to use them.

[degruch]

You can compare the last two seasons to the early 2000s when we picked up Fraser Gehrig (West Coast), Luke Penny (Bulldogs), Brett Voss (Brisbane), Brent Guerra (Port Adelaide), Jason Gram (from Brisbane), Sam Fisher (mature age South Australian). We gave up a few second rounders for those players and for the most part it worked out well

Hamill, Knobel and Lawrence came during that period too, plus all those fantastic young players in the draft to add to an already decent list...we never had it so good!

In regard to giving up a couple second rounders, hasn't the value of a good player been pushed up (unless he's being traded by St Kilda, of course)? I'm not sure if it's any of the introduction of new franchise clubs, multiple drafts, free agency, future pick trading, or all of them, but I can see a club's entire draft hand being spent on a top player in the future (practically what transpired with the Kelly trade).

[saintspremiers]

Our "successful" period from 2004 until 20011 was due to hitting the draft hard for 4 years and then doing some trades. This rebuild we have butchered most of our draft picks yet we are acting as though we are a top 4 side and topping up. It's not going to work. You must build that core group through the draft first. We haven't done that.

Really don’t care what trolls think. Or even if they have the ability to think.