Is it a good thing for your club to swap picks?

Yeah, to Adelaide for pick 1.

The Suns and Bombers have similar draft hands with differing list needs. The Suns have the best pick, but the Bombers have the very next 3 picks. The Suns can get as many as 6 Academy rookies through pre-listing, with 2 of them rated first round talents and the others second to fourth round quality. Essendon lost two A-Grade halfback flankers and their best tall and small forwards. Perkins replaces Fantasia right away, Reid can develop to replace the Bombers' ageing tall backs, Wright replaces Daniher, but they'll pick up one of Phillips, Hollands or Bruhn and be content with their haul. Hind can replace Saad, after a fashion and they might try Caldwell out there too. The academy boys will have a couple of years to develop. The Suns are different. They have a Davies and Jeffrey, both 192cm, but different players. They have a great crop to prelist from who go straight to the rookie list, but not one key forward. That's why I reckon Nik Cox is a smokey for the Suns' pick. He's fast, he has endurance, he can play forward or back and he's got intangibles = leadership, character, ambition, attitude. I will be filthy if they follow the herd and get another midfielder.

Will Carlton Trade Pick 78 ?

So who Will Carlton Draft at Pick 31 and 38?

I’m not sure about Cox I think the bombers need to be looking at will Phillips (if he drops that far), Zach Reid (probably be early), and Archie Perkins if they can. You gotta remember Cody brand and josh eyre are both key position prospects next year.

One thing I really like about it is that it normalises the idea that trading a second round pick from this year for a third round pick next year is simply how later picks should be valued. The Suns can't even use it this year, which would normally devalue any trade, except where pick 37 ends up this year is also quite interesting as it probably won't be very far from 31, but both will likely be further out than their current spots.

Well Sydney SWANS,Carlton and Gold Coast Suns have just Swaped Draft Picks,Blues Now have 31,38 and 78....Swans has Pick 48 and Gold Coast Suns has Pick 37.?

Win for all three clubs.

Trade just went through. Carlton gave 48 and future 3rd Swans gave 31 Suns gave 37 Carlton got 31 Swans got 37 and 48 Suns got future 3rd Basically, Blues move up, Swans get more points to match their Academy boys this year and the Suns get points to match their Academy boys next year. Good business.

He has a moustache? I thought that WAS latte froth!

It will be very, very interesting to see if trends from last year continue. It is hard to see no bids for JUH until pick 10, but that's exactly what happened last year with Tom Green. Another interesting trend was the micro trades where clubs jostled in the draft order. There were 10 live pick trades for 3rd round places! Only one real live trade affected the first round, but then Carlton and Port got active at the end of the round and start of next round, leading to overall 5 trades for position in the 2nd round, although you wouldn't call the Suns trading in for 27 with the future mid first round pick micro (currently 13, but after bid matching could get out to 17). But just looking at the top 21 picks, 10 had been traded, two were matching bids on tied players, while the top pick was a priority pick. This year will look even crazier, with 11 picks traded already, 3 priority/compensation picks awarded, while in the 2nd round 16 of 19 picks have already been traded and 1 of the 3 untraded picks is a compensation pick. I also think that List Managers have all sorts of roles for team members. You watch the video of them and it may be the list manager doing all the talking for the camera, but those role players in the team have got all the scenarios. Then there are the infamous "boards", which the cameras will never be allowed to see, where each club has carefully predicted the draft in accordance to years worth of scouting and player interviews.

Live trading is another complication, you may think the picks ahead of you will go a certain way but then another club makes an offer too good to refuse and that can change everything. We have only seen the very early stages of live trading. We might be in for a late night!

As I said in another thread, I happy for the Suns to take the pick they’ve got. After early bids, it could be pick 7, with JUH and Hawthorn’s interest in Braeden Campbell. Sliding back after that means settling for a player you might not want. If the Suns top 8 isn’t Ugle-Hagan, McDonald, Grainger-Barrass, Thilthorpe, Hollands, Campbell, Phillips and Bruhn in some combination, I’d be surprised. It’s virtually consensus. Now, they get the last one of those, so what does their next 8 look like and how will list need cut across that? I’m sticking with Nik Cox because he couldn’t be more suited to the Suns desperate need of a swingman. Cal Twomey rated Cox today as the 4th tall forward prospect on Road to the Draft, predicting he goes to the Bombers…

5, 6, 14, 27, 44 ... instead of 6, 7, 8, 44 ... with a gain of 385 points after allowing for picks to slide looks pretty good to me. Being a list manager must be an incredible task, especially when so much can happen in a couple of minutes. It is a lot more than points which we can calculate at our leisure. Draft night will be something else and I expect the live trading to go up another level.

Noiret, why haven’t you included the late draft picks for each club? In such compromised draft, bids for tied players will cause late picks to come in dramatically. It’s also early crow with lists still being culled. Sydney just cut 4 players overnight. Look forward to discussing these predictions when the numbers are set.

Peter Wright is a very good player. The Suns really messed him around this year and shortened games didn’t suit his attributes at all. The two big knocks on Pete are dropping marks and lack of aggression in marking contests. Well even with below average ball delivery he’s averaged 5 marks a game and he clunks them all around the ground. Maybe not running him 16km a game would give him a bit more burst on the lead and effort in the contest. They also made him put on and then drop weight, which affected his core strength. Just let him play at a big man’s weight and watch his confidence return. One thing he won’t miss is the dew on the ball. People don’t realise that Carrara is built in a swamp. It is so humid it has its own weather system. Great for playing golf, but no good for footy. I’ve suspected big Pete would go to the Bomber ever since Ben King started playing up forward. The Daniher rumbling confirmed it. He’ll be a boom recruit who impresses Bombers fans with his extra tenacity, chop out in the ruck and solid tank.

McDonald has done everything that could have been expected of him by now, but perhaps he is just precocious. I pay a lot of attention to birthdays for bigger players. For example Jordan Ridley’s DOB is 20/10/1998, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that it took him a year longer to develop. Essendon selected Nick Bryan 22/10/2001 last year. Players born later in their draft year have more potential upside, especially taller players who generally take longer to develop anyway. Logan McDonald’s DOB is 4/4/2002. I suspect Essendon have taken a different path with Wright, Stewart, and Harrison Jones. They would really have to believe that McDonald was exceptional, performing at the senior level was certainly impressive in his 17th year for a big player.

Say the Bombers get 27 instead of 37?

Big Joe is sitting in West End as I type, latte froth in his bushy mo, looking a bit startled for two reasons: everybody recognizes him, even with the aviator glasses; and, someone just informed him that the goalposts are thicker at the Gabba.