I would have thought this an impossible question when we won the flag with an incredibly young list but our team today had an average of 63 games and our age average was 23 years one month. Compare this with teams accepted to be rebuilding:

Brisbane 24 years 1 month and 77 games
North 96 games and 25 years 5 months
St Kilda 24 yrs 10 mths, 82.9 games

Eagles ave was 100 games, 25 yrs 3mthd

Horrible though today was, our age profile is of a team that gets shellacked every week. We are playing Naughton instead of Roberts, Richards instead of Biggs, English ahead of Boyd, Webb instead of Wallis - normally this happens when a coach decides he must build a future rather than cling to a past and “get games into the kids.” Has this all been forced on us by injury or is the guard already changing, with all the pain this will bring?