Our veteran quandary

[Pies4shaw]

Pendles better stay fit - Sidey is coming for his Collingwood games record.

[qldmagpie67]

I’m not surprised to be honest
The guy originally charged with resetting our list has been absent for 6 months and 2 blokes with limited experience pit in his place
Im guessing this means Wright isn’t going to be returning to his former position because Wright was adamant about phasing out veterans over a 2/4 year period
At the end of 2025 it looks likely we will lose Pendles Howe Sidey Cox and possibly Elliott and WHE.
Talk about losing too much at one time
It this means is our 2025 will most likely be no better than 2024 as aging players don’t get better past 33/34
Hope the club knows what it’s doing

[neil]

If we win the GF in 2025 then this is a brilliant decision
If we have a season like this year then it is a terrible short sighted decision

[Pies4shaw]

Seriously, there's a lot written in this thread about moving veterans on because of some allegedly pressing need to "start the rebuild", predicated on the notion that you can somehow get ahead of the curve by dumping your all-time greats. Comparisons are frequently made with Hawthorn. Hawthorn moved Sam Mitchell on in 2016 and Hodge in 2017 - and they are no closeer to winning a premiership now than they were then. They've moved on other older players - at least two of whom (Isaac Smith and our Mitchell) helped their new clubs significantly in their premierships. I'm not sure whether people apprehend that Hawthorn last won a premiership with Burgoyne, Sam Mitchell, Hodge, Lake, Lewis, Hale and Roughead all in the team - and though they have attended a couple of finals series since, they haven't actually won a final since Sam Mitchell and Luke Hodge played together.

Yes, Hawthorn is probably closer to their next finals victory than Collingwood is (in part because we gave them our most talented young footballer after Nick Daicos for basically nothing and replaced him with a worker-bee) - but that isn't because they "beat the curve" - they haven't won a game that mattered since 2015. Maybe they'll get into the 8 and win a final this year - but that won't be because they "took ruthless action" and got ahead of the game. In an 18 team competition, it isn''t much of a return to miss finals for 5 successive seasons and not win a final for (at least) 9.

At the risk of triggering people with oblique references to unmentionable historical matters, it is worth observing that no-one played more finals games for Carlton than Bruce Doull. Even playing in some very great teams at a time when there was no draft to even up the competition, Doull played in 29 finals for 14 wins, 14 losses and a draw. Our two oldest (and clearly greatest) players both have better finals-winning percentages than Doull. You don't replace that outstanding class by, eg, retiring Sidebottom and Pendlebury and keeping Poulter and Ruscoe instead. All-time greats - when they are actually all-time greats like Pendlebury and Sidebottom - are referred to in that way for a reason. You don't improve your team by moving on your high-class older players just for the sake of it - you keep turning over your list until you find the next high class players and, as you do - and as they become better than the stars you already have in their same positions, they get the gigs.

I'm all for turning over the list to move on the guys who aren't AFL standard but, in my respectful view, there's more than enough listed players at Collingwood who are never going to be high-quality AFL players that can be moved on without touching our handful of genuine champions.

[Haff]

^P4S the problem isn’t the need to bottom out and rebuild, the problem is that you don’t want to be going to the draft when Tassie come in, if we hold on too long with this aging list, we will hit a cliff and have to pick at the carcass of a draft Tassie has already munched on.
More luck with injuries will see us more competitive next season I have no doubt but that cliff is coming. I reckon we won the flag at 12:55 in the premiership clock, that’s fine, we got one, but if the powers that be think that this list is at 11 then I reckon we’re gonna have a bad time if we try and keep the window open.

[Pies4shaw]

^ And when we fall off the cliff, we'll likely miss winning in the finals for 5 or more years. So, does it really matter?

[Mr Miyagi]

We don’t have the VFL talent, trade capital, nor the draft hand to be retiring veterans who are still capable of winning us games. This is the reality.

[Durka]

^^ And that's the problem.
I don't believe that anyone here could have anything but the greatest respect for Sidey, but the fact that he is going on again leaves everyone with a very bad feeling about the future.

[Pies2016]

We should all be a little cautious over the immediate knee jerk reactions that come with yet another “ anonymous source “ media story.
IF the majority of vets are kept on for another year, that would likely suggest the club genuinely believes they are a reasonable chance to be up there again in 2025. If that’s what the club believes, then surely as supporters, we should at least go along with that notion.
Here’s what we don’t know right now. We don’t know how many recycled player signings the club will secure in the off season. What if the club secured two free agents, one trade and just one of our young blokes comes on enough to be best 23 next year. That would equate to an improvement of four players in our best 23. So either the likes of Howe, Sidey, Cox, Elliot etc bring a form line that’s good enough to be part of that 23 or they play VFL. When the inevitable injuries and some of the above players are still fresh and hungry from not being pushed in the VFL, then they become the perfect replacements for a side that has plans for September action.
For mine, IF the plan is to have a tilt in 2025, then keeping most of the vets makes a bit of sense but if we aren’t planning to add some ready made talent in this off season, then I don’t see the value in keeping too many vets on a list that has accepted this premiership window has just closed.

[Durka]

We don't know the salary cap position and how much cash there is to entice a player from another club, either in a trade or as a free/restricted agent, but retaining veterans that are well past their best by dates, doesn't help with that. I assume that the cap space that will be generated from the delistings to come, will be minimal, as they will be fringe players only.

[Gerry Cooper]

I think giving Sidebottom another year is very unwise. He can't run out games now and will be worse in 2025. Why would young players who can't get a go now want to languish in the reserves for another year? Unless Sidey is being signed on to provide depth in the reserves we can look forward to another mediocre season in 2025.

[Dark Beanie]

But there is no guarantee that any of those young players, if they left, would get a senior gig somewhere else.
Of the ones we let go last year only Poulter is getting a senior gig and only towards that back half of the season (and playing OK just as the Bulldogs start to hit some form).

The conversation about our veterans is more prounounced as everyone is focusing on our ageing list and (is likely) lack of finals this year.

I would hope that the club would have whatever tough conversations are needed with older players and those players also be realistic about what they can offer the club moving forward.

[qldmagpie67]

P4S youe hawks comparison isn’t equal
Those Hawthorne teams won 4 in 7 years including 3 in a row
History tells you getting up 3 years in a row in very very uncommon
We won 1 and were lucky in some ways to do so.
That Sidey goal from 50 has been shown to be an absolute fluke and it’s more likely Nathan Buckley makes a comeback to play AFL than that ever happening again. The past few weeks he’s missed shots from 30/40 out
But forget that let’s look at the cold hard facts
All our veterans (with the exception of checkers) are down between 10-20% on there stats from 2023 and much more on career average stats (prior to 2023)
Old legs don’t magically refresh as time goes on
We’ve been forced to move Sidey from the wing to HBF during the season at times because he couldn’t run our games.
Pendles has been half a step off the pace for most of the season
Crisp has had a few good game but as a whole his season has been below expectations
Mitchell has missed over half the season and prior to getting injured was struggling
How do we know what the young players have if we don’t invest game time into them and see
Giving them a couple games here and there isn’t the answer
They need time to get used to the speed and physically requirements
Taking the same list forward is only prolonging the inevitable that sooner or later we need to know what the younger players have to offer
Time has come to rip off the Band-Aid and retire a couple veterans and put a couple kids in while they have some veterans still around them to lead and guide them

[RudeBoy]

I've pondered our veterans 'problem' for a while now, and changed my mind a couple of times. However, the real 'problem' is not with our veterans, but rather, with the lack of potential A grade talent in the VFL. If Macrae, McInnes or Allan were bashing the AFL door down with stellar VFL form, then an argument could be made to move on some veterans. However, so far, NONE of these players look good enough for senior footy. Even Dean, Bytel, Sullivan and Long, to my eye look like nothing more than depth players, with little prospect of becoming A grade AFL players. So let's not be pre-occupied with forced retirements of our older stars, and instead focus on our paucity of real talent at the VFL level.

[SLORT]

If Sidey (or Howe) has an interest in coaching, I'd think that'd be a good reason for him to continue for another year, giving him an assistant role in our 2's. Interesting article from 2020 with Heater discussing player-coaching benefits ~

https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-20 ... 9be0a2b89e