Quote Originally Posted by bornadog View Post
Tim is worth every cent of $1 million plus. He is more than just a ruckman, he is a midfielder in a 208cm body. He can float back and take marks, he can be parked in the forward line if need be, and moves around the ground with ease and his ruck work has put him in the top 5 of the AFL (top 3 for hit outs to advantage).

I said a long time ago that he will take time to mature, but it was always evident (to me), that he had the talent to be a star.

Come on Dogs!, get the deal done.
He had a breakout season last year without question - he took some big strides forward in his ruck craft, which was a real obvious and very costly weakness against the better rucks in previous seasons.

Playing devil's advocate, did we win finals or even challenge the big dogs in 2023? We weren't even close. Now of course that's not English's fault, but team success is so much more than one player excelling in their position. A good comparison is Grundy leaving Collingwood and they previously brought in a workhorse like Darcy Cameron as cover - Cameron is a premiership player and Grundy is onto his 3rd club in 3 seasons. Now we don't have a proven Cameron ruck type on our list at the moment (unless Lobb can change his perspective on more ruck minutes), so it places us in a crap list management/salary cap situation regarding English right here and now.

I'd prefer we kept English but it needs to be in line with our salary cap and he also needs to take a haircut for the incredible (and honestly misplaced at the time) faith that the club has put into him as a no 1 ruckman for many years. This faith has cost us so badly in key finals (and a GF), and IMO English should repay this enormous faith by taking what would still be a very generous contract but at the lower end that he would otherwise command on the open market. He's a sub $1m a season for mine.

Perfect world is that we win the flag in 2024 and English raises his game even further and becomes a premiership hero. If he then chose to take a godfather offer from a West Coast, it would be with all our blessing and we would be compensated accordingly - but we would have needed to shore up an immediate plan B.