Equipped with five picks inside the top 30 of this year\u2019s National Draft, Essendon is presented with a slew of options at the trade table this year.<\/p>\n
With the Continental Tyres AFL Trade Period officially kicking off on Monday, the Bombers were flagged as the nominated Club for departing SUN Brayden Fiorini in a good start to the window.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Approaching a busy month of talent acquisition, the Dons\u2019 GM \u2013 List and Recruiting Matt Rosa joined Gettable to discuss the Club\u2019s strategy over this period, including trade targets and their opportunities to move up the draft order.<\/p>\n
Rosa on\u2026 the state of trade<\/p>\n
It is great Brayden (Fiorini) has nominated Essendon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We see a clear role there on the wing, it\u2019s a role-specific target we were after. It’s a total package with Brayden, he\u2019s got great leadership, high end character and footy IQ. We will work with Gold Coast to facilitate a fair trade.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no doubt he\u2019ll complement our mix.<\/p>\n
(Zane Duursma moving) looks unlikely, we do like his talent but we understand they\u2019ve invested a lot in him, he\u2019s under contract. Naturally, with the connection to Xavier there\u2019s been a bit of noise around that, but we expect him to be at North Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Rosa on\u2026 potential moves up the draft order<\/p>\n
We are really excited about the hand we have as it provides us flexibility.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll continue working on if we can get up the draft order, options moving into next year as well. We\u2019re certainly really comfortable with the players that\u2019ll be there at the pointy end of the draft.<\/p>\n
Ranking order of priority, No.1 would be to get up in this draft if we can, but we\u2019ll explore all options. We\u2019ve let Richmond and West Coast know we\u2019d be keen to explore moving up. If we feel there can be a win-win, we\u2019ll look at that.<\/p>\n
It’s a range of 10 to 15 players we are still considering for those early picks. The calibre of characters and the talent you know is going to be coming through your door, it is really exciting for our football club.<\/p>\n
We were always comfortable with that deal (the pick trade with the Demons last year), regardless if it was a pick five or a pick outside of 10, that was a win-win for both us and Melbourne.<\/p>\n
We both achieved a result out of that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rosa on\u2026 the state of the list, our ruck depth, out-of-contract players<\/p>\n
We have real confidence in our core group, there’s a lot of good players in there, they just haven\u2019t been able to play together enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We are really bullish our 23 will be more experienced next year and we will always look to add character and leadership if it feels like the right fit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We are comfortable (with our ruck mix). We thought Nick Bryan started the year really well and we\u2019re bullish he\u2019ll be back in the early stages of next season.<\/p>\n
We brought Lachie Blakiston in through the mid-season draft \u2013 unfortunately, with our injuries he had to go and play as a key back – which was great to see how well he adapted to that role that he\u2019d never played in his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you saw his last quarter against the SUNS in the last game, he played in the ruck and showed his athleticism, that\u2019s his natural position.<\/p>\n
Another big summer into Vigo Visentini and we think he\u2019ll jump again, so we\u2019re comfortable with where we sit knowing we\u2019ve also got Peter Wright there as backup if needed.<\/p>\n
Our uncontracted players are (having to wait until after the Trade Period) and that\u2019s the unfortunate nature of this year that there are a few boys on hold.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll just need to work out where it sits for us from a list spots point of view, we\u2019ll work through what to do with our picks.<\/p>\n
Rosa on\u2026 attracting high-end talent, future drafts\u00a0<\/p>\n
We will always be looking to bring in high-end talent.<\/p>\n
We are keen to go to the draft again this year, we\u2019ll still stay open to young talent if they\u2019re A-grade but we feel like our last couple of drafts have been really good and we\u2019re really excited to attack this one as well.<\/p>\n
There’s no doubt we will be aggressive moving forward with bringing in high-end talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the young talent we\u2019re gathering and our strong core staying out on the park a lot more, we\u2019ll be an attractive place to be.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no doubt the draft will be compromised moving forward (with Tasmania\u2019s picks), so it is a good time to get young talent in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019re always looking ahead to a couple of years and we\u2019ll do a lot of planning now that we\u2019ve got a line of sight on how it will look.<\/p>\n
Rosa on\u2026 Zach Merrett\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nothing has changed there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been really clear how important Zach is to us, he\u2019s super valuable for our Club. No trade request from Zach. We are aware he is in a hurry, he\u2019s the ultimate competitor, but he has been clear and his management have been very clear he believes the direction the club is on.<\/p>\n
He really believes in the young talent we\u2019ve got coming through – we will continue discussions with Zach.<\/p>\n
There has been good two-way communication. We know there’s some frustrations there, but he believes in the young fellas and the football club. We see him as an Essendon player moving forward and will continue playing great football for the club.<\/p>\n
Rosa on\u2026 NGA prospects<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve spoken to both (Huss El Achkar and Adam Sweid) and sat down with their families, we really like them as players but we need to see where our picks sit, there\u2019s still a lot to play out there and they\u2019re aware of that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve both had fantastic seasons and we\u2019re really proud of the NGA program we\u2019re running at the football club, led by Marty Allison \u2013 we\u2019ve seen talent come through in past years and we feel like we\u2019ve got a lot more coming through.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019re giving these players the best opportunity to make it to the highest level.<\/p>\n
(Koby Bewick) is a talent, we really like him. We\u2019re aware we\u2019ve got some good players coming through our father-son program, there\u2019s still a lot to play out to see exactly where he sits in a couple of years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Equipped with five picks inside the top 30 of this year\u2019s National Draft, Essendon is presented with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-195409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}