Sure it's possible to be a Carlton but it's pretty clear we aren't. They continually top up with middle age players that go nowhere, look at Saad and Williams coming in on big contracts and costing high draft picks. Throw in guys like Betts, McGovern, Martin, Newnes and half a dozen ex gws players. Their best moves have been grabbing kids in the draft like Walsh and Mackay.
We were at the top 6/7 years ago and we burnt out the list. We kept topping up till there was no youth left and we fell to the bottom. We only half committed to a rebuild and it did little to help us before getting some actual quality kids into the side over the past 3/4 years.
We now have a good starting point with quality youth but we clearly need more (especially now we're losing Cerra). If we go back to avoiding youth, we may improve in the short term but not the long and we'll burn out our next generation.
Neale is an overall improvement on our list and playing 22 but not a large one and won't move us into premiership contention while he's still able to have an impact. We need more than that in the short term and in the long, it will be the youth that gets us there.
When it comes to the downsides of the trade not going through, there is little incentive for us to play ball. If we don't trade, we continue to draft top quality kids and fill the needs of our playing list. If Brisbane don't trade then they risk Neale playing from WA or sitting out altogether with no compensation and then we look at a trade of a 30yo in 2022. The onus is on them to get this done and our pick 27 is as high as I would go (which is still likely to be a good kid like Williams, Dittmar, Browne or whoever that I'd still take ahead of Neale personally).
