It's not ideal Hypen, but we don't know what was going on behind the scenes. Teams rarely trade down from the first round of the draft. A couple of years ago I advocated for us packaging something like Barlow, Suban and Hannath for a young KPP or to trade up in the draft. I was howled down. It might have been the right call, but no way we make the 2013 GF without Barlow, and we were straight kicking away from a Premiership. It's never straight forward.
Darling was a big miss, but whether the 'character issues' stuff is / was real depends on who you ask. We can't mock the Eagles for turning a blind eye to these things, and then bag Freo for not.
Paparaone isn't a KPP, and has kicked one goal this season. I'm not sure he would have helped us this season. It didn't work out, but I reckon picking Simpson ahead of him was the right call at the time. Tanner Smith, who we took after Paparone, still has time to be a good player.
Similar story for Kersten. At 191cm, he doesn't fit the profile of the modern KPP, and is more suited to being mid-sized forward. 9 goals for Geelong this year doesn't indicate he would have been our saviour this year (or any). We took Sheridan, Crozier and Neale that draft. Sheridan and Neale haven't taken the next step, but are regular players, and Neale is a star. I'd call that draft a win.
The Giants showed no interest in trading down for veterans, and in fact gamed the system for the pre-draft picks they were given for that purpose to trade with GC for more draft picks, Cam McCarthy was never coming to us.
Durden and Goddard might be good players. So might our picks from that year. That's all speculation at this point.
Bondy and the team said at this year's draft they were happy with the young talks we had. We all laughed. Then A Pearce showed that he has the makings of a very good player. Hopefully Apeness and Smith will do the same next year, and we will be grateful that Weller and Blakely are in our midfield.
But we have been top 4 for three years in a row. You don't get and stay there without doing a decent job of list management.
