Quote Originally Posted by Sedat View Post
Don't want to be the master of hindsight, but with the prospect of Hrovat leaving the kennel we are looking at a situation whereby Lake ends up playing more games for Hawthorn than Hrovat did for us - oh, and the small matter of 3 flags and a Norm Smith as well.

I am a huge advocate of list regeneration to ensure that new talent continues to come through, but if you are going to trade out established senior players you'd want to make sure you are getting true market value (my thoughts on the poor value we received on the Lake trade has been aired numerous times). Furthermore, I would resist trading out genuine elite talent (of which Lake most certainly is) unless they are out of contract and are adamant they want to leave (eg: Griff, Higgins, Cooney), and there is more than adequate talent coming through to replace that player (Markovic and Austin don't qualify as adequate replacements, and they did the bulk of our FB heavy lifting in the years immediately after trading out Lake).

We haven't made many poor list management decisions in the last few years but we read the Lake situation terribly at the time IMO. We even hastened the decision by deciding to play one of the finest FB's this century as a key forward to give opportunities to plodders now no longer on our list, which means we still have a glaring weakness in the area that Lake brilliantly filled for us. Sure we might get more value out of whoever we bring to the club from the Hrovat trade (pick or player) but that is not really the point.
It was pretty clear that Lake wanted out and was disgruntled with the club. We certainly didn't help that situation. I'm still ok with getting Hrovat but there's no question we under-estimated Lake's longevity and in hindsight considering what Hawthorn got out of him he was worth more.