DbtS, over its history Freo has done a reasonable job of getting players to Freo who have expressed a desire to come home because they are homesick or have family issues. Peter Bell, Troy Cook, Jeff Farmer, Des Headland, Johnno Griffin and most recently Harley Bennell have made it here not because we are experts at trading, but because the players sincerely wanted to return home, and clubs are loathe to ruin players' lives - or risk having a disgruntled player ruin team chemistry - when another club can put fair value on the table in return.
Where it does go wrong is where we don't have an obvious swap, or the opposition club doesn't care about player welfare.
We ran into trouble with Mitch Clark a few years ago because we didn't have a high pick, and Bond didn't think he needed to do a deal to get one (although he did cash in our priority pick). So it gave Melbourne a window to trump Freo's offer, and Clark enough time to convince himself that a dump truck of money was more important than coming home.
Where we got into trouble with GWS was that they didn't care about player welfare, and threw McCarthy under the bus by publicly questioning whether McCarthy wanted to come home, or was just seeking more money. They were so successful in muddying the water that they got away with jeopardising a player's career to make a point. The Footy Gods frown upon such behaviour, and conspired to ensure they actually missed a top 3 pick for their act of bastardry.
The difference between Hogan and Lobb is that there have been rumours for years Hogan wanted to return home, so any attempted narrative by Melbourne that it's a money-play will fall on deaf ears. Also, pick 3 is reasonably valuable, so there's a chance that pick 3 packaged with something else is approaching fair value.
GWS have shown they don't care about player welfare. Also, pick 3 might be overs for Lobb, and so we would need to coble together something else to get him. I'm not in the room when Bond comes up with his negotiation plan, but I'm not sure wheeling-dealing is his strong suit.
The best play is to get the McCarthy deal done quickly, and then focus on Hogan. We risk losing Lobb, but to be honest, I'm not sure what we could offer GWS for him anyway.
