Agree with most of that Fre_Doh, and appreciate you being specific about where Bond and Co may have made missteps. I thought for sure we would take Lever in that draft, and Weller / Lever could turn out to be the biggest miss since Pitt / Darling. Still, one glaring need for our list is outside pace and class (partly because Mora and Simpson haven't contributed, and Sheridan, Sutcliffe and Crozier never took the next step), and Weller looks to have a bit of it.
I agree that at higher picks Freo needed to take calculated risks. Put another way, they needed a way to squeeze more value out of the picks they had by picking players they deemed 'undervalued' in the draft system.
One way a player can be undervalued is if they are injured in their draft year, as Lever was. We actually used that strategy in selecting Tucker this year, who dominated as a youngster, but missed second half of his draft year with a serious ankle and leg injury that required surgery and nearly six months of recovery time. So, I think it was a strategy Freo was aware of.
We took a chance on an 'undervalued' pick with Josh Simpson. On talent alone, he should have been higher than 16, but there was risk because of his background. I have no doubt it was a worthwhile risk to take him, but a combination of Freo's handling of the situation, and Josh's attitude meant that it was a good pick that went unfulfilled.
We've also taken a chance on players that we've considered undervalued because they play outside of traditional football states. Neale and A Pearce (Tassie) have shown that to be a good strategy, and Weller (Qld) could prove to be as well.
So, I think there has been some method to the players we have selected.
As for trading, I agree we had to be aggressive. We honestly don't know how aggressive we have been, other than it hasn't resulted in many trades. It's hard to think which of our players would have had value. Average players (Sheridan, Sutcliffe and Crozier types) would have had very little value, and actual good players (Hill, Neale, Walters) we wouldn't have wanted to give up.
Plus, Hawthorn has been able to make those trades because people have requested a trade to Hawthorn. As I understand it, Lake, Gibson, McEvoy (and Frawley as an FA) all nominated Hawthorn as their preferred club. If it's an auction, the original clubs would get close to market value. Once it's a direct sale, the clubs know the best they'll get is a high first round draft pick. It's exactly what happened with Freo and Bennell, the only difference is more players have wanted to go to Hawthorn.
Perhaps Bond isn't as good as his Hawthorn counterpart, but I'm guessing it helps when you can organise the meeting in a room with premiership cups lying around. At that point, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Again, if I'm an established Victorian player, why would I want to come to Perth to play in front of 33,000 people for a club that gets no respect from the league and has never won a premiership, over a club that wins them all the time, plays at the MCG in front of 70,000, and is (currently) the most respected club in the league. Bond would have to be at least 50% at his job than the Hawthorn guy to pull that off.
