old55 wrote:
Carlton has been caught in a difficult place with the unfair draft penalties coming at a terrible time. Without penalties you would have Goddard, Wells and McLean and things would be looking a lot brighter.
You can get early picks by finishing low or trading good players. You have been stuck with massive contracts on your good players making them untradable. Hopefully some of these contracts are coming to an end. Even if they aren't I think you need to bite the bullet and pay some salary McKernan-style.
The problem is, the players with any value at all are getting older and their value is eroding fast. When you are winning you can off-load hacks at exhorbitant prces -- look at pick 6 for Danny Jacobs. Unfortunately with miserable results your average players appear valueless (and party time is over for Sheeds as well here).
IMO you need to trade Campo, Lappin and Lance at the end of this year and hope to nett 3 late first rounders -- if you think any of these three will pull top 5 picks -- dream on.
Play a side with a view to the future, make sure your promising youth is protected by the journeymen you picked up when Pagan arrived and did the clean-out. As posters here have said, the bad results will take care of themselves. Without the three trades on your list 2006 will be tough too and should also yield some early picks.
Outside of Kouta (and minus the 3 trades) Stevens and Fevola are your oldest class players and they have 5-6 years left which is long enough to make them valuable when your 2005-6 picks start to deliver.
PS. I think it is highly likely that you will defeat my team MFC this week, but that does not change my view about where you are at and what you need to do.
Campo and Lance ... maybe. Even though I think they cop it a bit unfairly on here I can see the point you are making old55 (welcome to TC by the way). I'm pretty sure we'd get sweet FA for Campo in any case. Lance *might* attract some bait, but probably not enough to hook Pagan's interest.
Lappin should stay. I'd be bitterly disapointed if he was traded away, regardless of the return. At a time when the club is desperate for examples of how to play the game Skinny is one of the few "senior" players to show pretty much every week what it takes to succeed at AFL level. He may not have the physical strength, but his tenacity makes up for that and he is generally always in our better players weekn in week out. Carlton is entering an unfamiliar phase, one that we need to accept, we have only two premiership players on our list and it could well be none in 2006, and quite possibly undeniable by 2007. That being the case having a 200 game, 150+ at Carlton, player like Matthew Lappin on our list is a must if we're to eschew anything meaningful out of our great past. We must protect our club heroes, and while Lappin has not tasted September success he deserves every right, IMO, to be held up there with some of the club's shining lights.
Skinny stays.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
Cover it up how you like, fact is we played and beat them and they are undefeated.
