As a club in a clearly articulated 5 year rebuild and approaching the third draft - we had to retain a high draft pick, irrespective of player trade movements, to bring more high end talent to compliment Brayshaw, Cerra and Logue.
It was a stroke of genius swapping picks with PA that effectively gave us pick 23 for next to nothing - in terms of draft points, which is the determiner in pure pick swaps.
That pushed our first pick out to 11, but I think the club knew pick 5 from Brisbane was coming once they improved their offer for the little mercenary.
It is that pick 5 we must keep - unless a swap with Adelaide gives us the ability to get Jordan Clarke and Ian Hill. I defer to Biz on the best draft prospects for us but Cal Twomey’s latest Phantom Form Guide here:
m.afl.com.au/news/2018-10-14/cal-twomeys...m-form-guide-october
has Clark at 10 & Hill at 17. They’re the two highest ranked West Aussies (something plenty on here have been calling for us to focus on) and whilst neither are KPP, I’m not sure with the imminent acquisition of Lobb - in addition to our exisiting, developing talls - we need to spend a high pick on one (or two) bigs. The highest rated King, Max (4), is overcoming an ACL and whilst his brother, Ben, (6) can swing to either end - the ‘go home’ factor is an issue. Especially when they only weigh 85:86 kg at 202cm tall, they’ll probably need a few pre-seasons in the gym to become really dominant. About the time Vic clubs will start circling.
Happy to hear Biz’a thoughts on some of the other high picks up for grabs but we desperately need an x-factor, small forward and Hill brings that. Clarke could slot straight into Blakely’s spot off half-back, when he goes in to replace LN - and could even move into that inside-role himself, in time.