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After missing the finals this year, and with some of their best players another year older, Collingwood, and coach Craig McRae, have already flagged how they intend to navigate the upcoming trade period.
“I say to the list mismanagement, ‘I don’t want picks, I want players’,” McRae said in a recent interview.
“Let’s bring players in and make us better, not just any player, but players that are going to make us better.”
He doesn’t want to go to the draft. He wants to trade to improve.
I appreciate the sentiment and agree. To an extent.
“I don’t want to stand still,” McRae said. “Geelong have done it extremely well, you look at that as a platform and you see other clubs like this year, Sydney brought players in, and it made them better.”
Geelong is a model that McRae respects. Most would. The Cats are regularly in the finals, and despite being written off almost every season, they just about always bounce back into the finals.
But it’s important to define what success means: is it just making finals, or is it winning flags?
James Bartel and Eddie McGuire talked about this on their podcast, with McGuire espousing that success could mean many things.
As a former club president, I can understand Eddie’s perspective – as a president, his purview would be the entire club’s operations, rather than exclusively on-field success. Bartel’s focus was premierships.
I agree with Bartel. In fifty years, nobody will remember, or talk about, Collingwood’s membership figures in 2024. But they will talk about Collingwood’s flag in 2023. And they’ll no doubt correlate 2023’s success with increase finances and memberships the following year.
So for Collingwood to use Geelong as a template is concerning.
When Geelong won the flag in 2011, it was with the tail-end of former coach Mark Thompson’s list build. That side had stars that had come from the draft – players like James Bartel, Steve Johnson, Matthew Scarlett, Joel Corey, James Kelly, Paul Chapman, Harry Taylor, Joel Selwood, Tom Hawkins, among many others.
The one player they did trade for – to complete their list build – was Brad Ottens.
Following that flag, Geelong would top up, and over the next ten years finish 6th, 2nd, 3rd, 10th, 2nd, 2nd, 8th, 1st, 4th, 3rd. You look at those numbers and marvel at their consistency. Through this period, they went to the draft but were also recycling players from all over to remain competitive.
But I would argue during this time that although they played finals in every year but 2015, they were never a powerhouse of the league, or a genuine contender. They were never the terror – not like, for instance, Hawthorn and Richmond were during that same time.
Many will scoff – surely a club that finished 2nd, 2nd, and two years later, 1st, is a premiership threat. But were they?
That Geelong continued to fall short would suggest they were good enough to get there, but never good enough to win it. It’s all well and good to say, “They could’ve”, but the facts show they didn’t. There’s a reason for that.
It’s not until 2022 that they towered over the league. The difference? They weren’t just bringing anybody in. Jeremy Cameron was the biggest recruit – a former number 1 draft pick, and one of the league’s best forwards.
They also recycled Tyson Stengle, a cast-off thanks to off-field indiscretions that reduced him to a bargain buy. Arguably their most important player, Tom Stewart, came from the draft.
Look at other list builds that have banked on trading: it was only a few years ago that St. Kilda traded up big. Or Richmond, who tried to keep their premiership window alive by paying up for Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper. Or Hawthorn, who tried to extend their dominance by trading out legends like Luke Hodge and Sam Mitchell, and bringing in players like Tom Mitchell, Jaeger O’Meara, Ricky Henderson and Tyrone Vickery.
Scott Pendlebury celebrates Collingwood’s win over Brisbane. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
That’s no disrespect intended to these players – they’re good players. But would you, for example, put any of these trades in the same league as Cameron?
In the new millennium, drafting and successful salary cap management have become the models of AFL success. Those who were tied to the past, such as Carlton in the early 2000s, struggled. Those who have tried to operate around it or use trading as the primary tool for their list builds may have enjoyed moderate short-term success but have invariably been left behind.
On the other hand, look at the clubs who’ve been dynastically successful – Brisbane in 2001, 02, 03; Geelong in 2007, 2009, and 2011; Hawthorn in 2008, 2013, 2014, 2015; and Richmond in 2017, 2019, 2020. These are all clubs who built through the draft, and then traded judiciously to address any remaining deficiencies.
If McRae doesn’t believe in drafting, in relying on trading, it rings alarm bells for Collingwood – especially given the aging profile of their list, and the lack of next-gen players, Nick Daicos aside, who’ve staked a claim on the future.
This need to top up saw the bottom drop out of sides like St. Kilda, Hawthorn, and Richmond. Throw West Coast as another who tried to remain relevant through trading before imploding spectacularly.
Scott Pendlebury and Steele Sidebottom are nearing the end of their careers. Does McRae think they’re replaceable just through trading?
Hawthorn tried that with Hodge and Mitchell, just as Richmond did with former captain Trent Cotchin and forward Jack Riewoldt. You don’t just find these guys on the open market for a single pick.
If Collingwood’s focus is going to be on trading, it’s a concern – especially given their track record of paying overs: Lachie Schultz cost a first and second rounder; Dayne Beams cost two first rounders; Adam Treloar cost two first rounders (both pick 7s); and Collingwood traded a future first rounder (which turned into pick 2) for a couple of draft picks in the 20s.
That’s also important to note – the one time Collingwood went heavily to the draft, they banked on an array of late-first-round and early second-round picks. Obviously, gems have been found lower in the draft. But there’s always a better chance of landing a gun talent with higher picks.
Now maybe Collingwood foresee a different playing field with a Tasmanian team coming in – the continued dilution of the talent pool that’ll lead to more seasons like this one, where there was no genuine powerhouse, and on their day about ten different teams could’ve finished in the top four. If that’s the case, the league’s open for helter skelter.
But that’s banking on a model that may not come to be and, if it does, is even more ripe to be dominated and pillaged by a club that has set itself up for dynastic contention – there are a few who have pillaged the draft of first rounders, or traded into the draft to acquire those selections.
This ideology that Collingwood doesn’t want picks, but players, is a worry, given the landscape isn’t built for freewheeling, and chequebooks no longer build a team.
You can trade as much as you like, but unless you have a treasure chest full of first-round picks, you won’t have the currency to bring in the guns you need to take you to glory.
If the goal is to remain competitive, great.
But the ultimate should be something else.
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