Every club wants to be one of the big 6 - making finals consistently and spending very little time falling out of the 8.
But the AFL work against that, they want a rigged market to squeeze money from every state. They punish the top teams and prop up the messed up ones - as long as they're Vics or part of the marketing strategy. Otherwise you can get stuffed and do better by yourself. That's pretty much the teams in WA.
Some clubs manage to negotiate this better than others. Hawthorn, Sydney, WC and Geelong do this well. They're consistently good performers, so trading, recruiting and retaining is easier. It makes the draft a little less crucial for them, to keep doing it.
Freo have drafted pretty well in recent years, but they also leak good players. Hopefully they can address this. I think it goes deeper than the Lyon admin, if we can't hold onto guys like Neal and Langdon, who were given a top start, and still want to bugger off.
