Are Carlton's young players actually improving?

Macca you hope your kids will get better but you can't be sure.The bluebaggers are on the verge of becoming meaningless and that is a tragedy.Something has to be done and what there doing isn't working.

Rebuilds are code for we have no idea what we are doing but will cross our fingers and hope all the other sides are as equally as clueless as us.

Sorry - I forgot to answer your question of how far we slid back. We took Hamill at 30 and had given up pick 24 for him (the carlton 2nd that slipped from 19 to 24 due to father son, academy and priority picks)

Yes it was a good trade for us...but GWS wanted Ian Hill and knew that another club with a pick before theirs wanted him as well AND..and this is the biggie, they had an academy ruck Briggs that the crows were considering bidding on and this trade helped to mitigate that

Ahh yeah, I forgot about bloody father sons and academy players bumping things back. Was there nothing else involved in the trade, our 2018 second rounder for GWS’s Second rounder plus our 2019 second rounder seems an unbelievable trade. How far did you slide back in 2018?

Simple. We had pick 8 (our pick from finishing where we did), 13 (from the McGovern trade) & 16 (from the lever trade (melbourne's 2018 1st rounder) + we had your 2018 2nd rounder which was an early 20's pick. You got the Melbourne 1st from us in the live trade - not your 2018 2nd rounder back

Sorry, you ended up with our 2018 second round pick(19) which you traded back to us with your 2019 first round pick for our 2019 first round pick. How was that pick also traded to GWS?

You misread me - not sensitive at all - just outlining why some of us think Gibbs is not the player he was and still should be. Re your summary of the trade, yep you got our 2018 2nd, but you forgot we also ended up with your 2019 2nd as part of the trade we did with GWS with your 2018 2nd we got from the Gibbs trade. So we ended up with Gibbs, Hamill and a 2019 2nd which depending on how things play out could be as high as pick 19 or 20. It depends what ends up happening with the 2019 2nd rounder we got from you as to whether Carlton or Adelaide ended up with the better end of the deal imo

Gee Sammy I only meant would he come back to the blues – you seem a little sensitive. On the Gibbs deal, you forgot we got your 2018 second rounder as well. As for 16 we essentially traded it for Kennedy, an upgrade from pick 40 to pick 30 in 2017 which allowed us to get Tom De Koning (who looks a bargain) and the Bulldogs 2018 second rounder which we combined with your 2018 second rounder we got in the Gibbs deal to get McGovern. So essentially we swapped Gibbs and Hamill for O’Brien (who is farfrom a bust) Kennedy, McGovern and an upgrade from 40 to 30 in 2017 which got us TDK – I am pretty confident we got the better end of the deal.

Carlton have some really good assets in their young players, but as a young team and not winning are under enormous pressure each week. The psychological effort they must go through to get up for every game in the face of a string of loses would be incredibly demanding. If anything is going to break you, the pointlessness of turning up each week expecting another lose would do it! It really should not be a surprise that they are having trouble getting up for games and will get hammered from time to time. It doesn't mean they are bad, as much as emotionally exhausted. I hope they have really good sports psychologists. When the GWS started, they went though the same pathway as Carlton now. One of the other factors for the Giants on top of psychological damage was the number of relatively young players that ended up with bodies older than their years. Each week they drew the heavy attention of their best opponents week after week. If Carlton values their future, their supporters need to give their administration room to start resting some of the players who carry them every week and giving longer post injury recovery times.

There is something going on with Gibbs - rumor had it he came to preseason out of shape and was behind the 8 ball in terms of his running results whereas many in the team were hitting pb's. His kicking this year has been way off - he gets enough of it but is not using it (he finished with 20+ touches last week and 2 goals which looks good..until you delve a little deeper and see that he only had 5 second half touches and was ineffective. Re the blues pulling a Croad, the gibbs trade got you 2 x 1st rounders and we got Gibbs + your 2nd with some later pick swaps. The 2nd we got form Carlton ended up being used to trade with GWS for their 2nd and Carlton's 1029 2nd (currently pick 19). We picked Hamill with the GWS second last year and would have picked Hamill with the stocker pick we traded to Carlton. FWIW, Hamill is tracking really well at SANFL level this year and I think he has the tools to become a very classy fast defender. From what I have seen, Lachy O'Brien who was picked at 10 has not come on as hoped and might be a bust? What did you do with the pick 16 as I can't recall

Sammy - I am interested in Gibbs being dropped again, I didn't see the game last week but the stats suggest he was a pretty handy contributor - thoughts? Could the blues pull a Croad?

Few do.

The question was how high do the blues have to finish, 16th seems the number and very doable. Also I don’t really think the blues need another 18 year old mid, Fisher, SPS, Dow, Walsh, Stocker, Setterfield & Cuningham will mature into a very strong midfield group.

Sammy at this time Last year Lukosius or King were fighting for No.1. Walsh became the popular choice later in the year. Let’s see who is no.1 when it happens and which club gets that player.

It’s hard to know what you mean when you omit every third word of a legible sentence

Well considering Rowell and Anderson are deemed to be absolute elite mids this year by may draft scribes, you need Adelaide to finish 17th or 18th to mitigate the trade. Imagine Cripps, Walsh and Rowell running around in the middle for Carlton next year - that is 3 real top end young mids

I’ll give 3 votes for that excuse lol think better bud

Charlie will never get to Patric Cripps level......EVER

Well next year he will win a Colman medal hahahahahahaha he up n down spud