TOPIC:

I see Nick Martin has been invited to train at Essendon with a chance to pick up their last draft spot. Good luck to him but this continued poaching of the WAFL by AFL clubs is out of control.

BC wrote:

I see Nick Martin has been invited to train at Essendon with a chance to pick up their last draft spot. Good luck to him but this continued poaching of the WAFL by AFL clubs is out of control
 

Agree BC , how many goes at the draft do they really need to have???

It's a joke and the WAFL clubs get nothing for all the work put into developing these players, they are just cherry picked and the clubs then have to replace them which takes up more resources. It's great that these mature age guys get a chance at AFL but the WAFL/SANFL/TFL clubs need to get some financial reward for providing a ready made player.
 

AFL lists should be finalised by Christmas, it’s unfair that 2nd tier clubs can lose a key player a couple of weeks before round one when there is no time left to recruit and they have just finished a pre season, it hurt us when we lost Waterman last season.

Tiger of old wrote:

AFL lists should be finalised by Christmas, it’s unfair that 2nd tier clubs can lose a key player a couple of weeks before round one when there is no time left to recruit and they have just finished a pre season, it hurt us when we lost Waterman last season.

Totally agree TOO. It is especially unfair if you lose a one point player and have no-one specific to replace him. There could be a possibilty that you have to recruit a player who comes with extra points and a transfer fee etc,.

Jjim wrote:

BC wrote:

I see Nick Martin has been invited to train at Essendon with a chance to pick up their last draft spot. Good luck to him but this continued poaching of the WAFL by AFL clubs is out of control

 

Agree BC , how many goes at the draft do they really need to have???

Too many. 

Here's an "in" of another sort...Holman has signed on as our principal sponsor for another 3 years. That's a terrific result to have a local WA family owned company with a national brand and exposure supporting our great club. Well done to both Subi and Holman.

Yes BC a good result, these companies want to be associated with successful entities and thats what we give them, hopefully for another 3 years. Next season will be interesting given we have lost Clark and those up and coming lads to the draft, plus an aging list but those blokes are still quality. I expect EF & SD to be the big improvers, with us, SF, Cl & Joondy thereabouts as usual.

Agreed SS. We may lose Nick Martin as well but will get Ryan Borchet back which is a big in for us. Braut and Atkinson should start to grow as our key pillars in defence over the next 12 months to take over from Lock, Heal and Gus. Then the likes of Bremen, young Borchet learning their forward craft as Sokol, Dela enter the twilight of their careers and hopefully Brandon Matera has a greater impact. The Hickmotts, Vanirsen, Golding, Giro getting more on-ball time as Kitch and Max slow down a bit but the one I'm really excited about is Mayo with a full pre-season under his belt. He has huge upside if he stays healthy. If he has a big 2022 I can see him getting another crack at AFL level as he has the potential to be something special.

The other thing we all lost sight of is the fact we had such a poor year in 2020 for a variety of reasons. Royal Lucky made the very astute observation over on the GF thread that Subi were in the middle of a one season premiership drought.    By winning the flag this year we were able to get the monkey off our backs so the boys should go into 2022 feeling pretty good about themselves.  

New in for us is midfielder Jordan Snadden, originally from the ever productive Leeming/Bullcreek football factory, was rookie listed with WC in the 2016 draft described as a fast aggressive mid, played mostly in the EP ressies plus 5 league games, played more league the following year but was delisted and returned to EF where he played some league in 2019 & 2020, played more ressies than league last year. Not sure how many points he will attract having played 20 odd league games, but at 190cm and 85kegs, he's a good size.

Welcome aboard Jordan,