Trade Rumours 2025

[EasternWest]

Typically the way the dogs operate, is that we lock in our trades weeks / months in advance

All this talk of Wilkie, Butts, Taylor, Erasmus won't pan out because we've only just thrown our hat in the ring late.

Unless you have some kind of "in" to insider information then you've contradicted yourself here.

If we lock in our trades months in advance, then how do you know we have just thrown our hat in the ring late? Maybe we've already squared something away "months in advance".

FWIW I don't think we've done either. We're just an ugly unattractive club to big recruits. And with our consistent middle of the road results I can understand why.

[Countrydog5]

Unless you have some kind of "in" to insider information then you've contradicted yourself here.

If we lock in our trades months in advance, then how do you know we have just thrown our hat in the ring late? Maybe we've already squared something away "months in advance".

FWIW I don't think we've done either. We're just an ugly unattractive club to big recruits. And with our consistent middle of the road results I can understand why.

Throughout the year I follow a lot of information related to our list management, both through WOOF, some personal connections in the AFL world and other forums. You can typically get a decent gauge of our targets from as far back as July / August. I probably worded it wrong in that we "lock in" our trades, but more so we get the commitment from the target. For example we knew as far back as mid year that Bruce & Keath would request a trade to us at end of season. I say we've only thrown our hats in the ring late, as the Wilkie approach has only meaningfully been considered within the last couple of weeks. SOS was from further out, we just were pipped $ wise so there's not much we can do there. There's been no indication at all we've even spoken with Butts' management, so that's likely just journos hypothesising. The pickups we have been targeting for some time, is supposedly a melbourne forward (no names) and Budarick. That's about it. We may have some special secret locked away but i'm not convinced. We're far too passive with our recruitment, and unfortunately that starts with Bevo.

[bulldogsthru&thru]

Throughout the year I follow a lot of information related to our list management, both through WOOF, some personal connections in the AFL world and other forums. You can typically get a decent gauge of our targets from as far back as July / August. I probably worded it wrong in that we "lock in" our trades, but more so we get the commitment from the target. For example we knew as far back as mid year that Bruce & Keath would request a trade to us at end of season. I say we've only thrown our hats in the ring late, as the Wilkie approach has only meaningfully been considered within the last couple of weeks. SOS was from further out, we just were pipped $ wise so there's not much we can do there. There's been no indication at all we've even spoken with Butts' management, so that's likely just journos hypothesising. The pickups we have been targeting for some time, is supposedly a melbourne forward (no names) and Budarick. That's about it. We may have some special secret locked away but i'm not convinced. We're far too passive with our recruitment, and unfortunately that starts with Bevo.

Why does it start with Bevo and not Sam Power? Not saying I disagree or agree. Just curious why you think it starts with Bevo.

We definitely don't excel in this area. Why that is I don't know. Is it purely down to being a small club? If we were confident in SOS and are now scrambling for plan b, well, that's poor.

Every club actively uses trades and FA to get better. We seem content to hope internal growth will take care of things. It's partly why we've been treading water for a while.

[Countrydog5]

Why does it start with Bevo and not Sam Power? Not saying I disagree or agree. Just curious why you think it starts with Bevo.

It's no secret that Bevo has his own internal code of honour regarding approaching contracted players. I believe it may have changed recently with his meeting with Rowell, however he did have a rule not to meet with any players whilst the season was ongoing. it likely played a role in us losing out on Barrass to the hawks last year. We were the first to turn his head, however Mitchell famously met him mid season, sold the dream and we lost out once again because Bevo was happy to wait until our season finished before teeing up the meet. It's the mentality that he's instilled to our recruiting department, play nice and hope the players are wooed by being the initial club to court.

If we truly want to drag players out of clubs, we will need to forget the nice guy act and aggressively pursue, meaning in season meetings from Bevo, Bont and co. and then hope we've sold the dream before the big clubs come knocking. It's why I believe the longer the butters talk goes on, the less chance we have. If he's not pried this year, next year he'll have the cats, hawks and however many others pulling out the big guns and we can't compete with that.

[Mofra]

Typically the way the dogs operate, is that we lock in our trades weeks / months in advance similar to our ongoing pursuit of Butters. This year we don't have that target, so i'm expecting an extremely underwhelming trade period. Besides Treloar who fell in our lap, most of our major trades of the last few years have been agreed to well in advance, such as Bruce, Keath, Martin, even Boyd etc.

We don't have the pull that major clubs do to recruit players off only a two - three week runup. All this talk of Wilkie, Butts, Taylor, Erasmus won't pan out because we've only just thrown our hat in the ring late. I'd love to be proved wrong, but I see us picking up 1-2 fringe role players and that's it, another year of saying "we'll focus on the draft" because we've missed out yet again.

It's extremely frustrating. Fantastic new facilities, the best player in the comp, money to spare and still no attraction. Nothing to move the needle next year. My genuine only hope to move us up the ladder next year is some extreme development from our young kids and maybe the new ruck rule helping English become one of the best rucks in the comp. It's not going to come from player movement i'll give you the tip.

Didn't we only approach Matt Kennedy late in the piece last year?

[Countrydog5]

Didn't we only approach Matt Kennedy late in the piece last year?

Yeah very late in the piece with only a couple days left in the trade period, I believe after we'd made the call to let Jacko go to the saints. He had little interest from elsewhere though interestingly enough. They seem to be our types, opportunistic late moves or long planned in advance. We don't win out on the bidding war trades, we're either out-priced or outsized.

[Countrydog5]

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Why we don't take part in these types of events is beyond me, and just even further convinces me we don't do enough. There can be no harm showing up to this and getting a gauge of who's doing what.

[EasternWest]

Throughout the year I follow a lot of information related to our list management, both through WOOF, some personal connections in the AFL world and other forums. You can typically get a decent gauge of our targets from as far back as July / August. I probably worded it wrong in that we "lock in" our trades, but more so we get the commitment from the target. For example we knew as far back as mid year that Bruce & Keath would request a trade to us at end of season. I say we've only thrown our hats in the ring late, as the Wilkie approach has only meaningfully been considered within the last couple of weeks. SOS was from further out, we just were pipped $ wise so there's not much we can do there. There's been no indication at all we've even spoken with Butts' management, so that's likely just journos hypothesising. The pickups we have been targeting for some time, is supposedly a melbourne forward (no names) and Budarick. That's about it. We may have some special secret locked away but i'm not convinced. We're far too passive with our recruitment, and unfortunately that starts with Bevo.

Fair enough.

[doggies ftw]

We’ve literally prepared probably the biggest offer in clubs history to a top 5 player in the comp and are concurrently chasing another clubs VC, one of the premier defenders in the league, with a million dollar deal and people are still complaining about us not doing enough. We’ve always done our work behind the scenes not in the media, maybe our approach doesn’t work or more likely we’re just not a super attractive destination especially when supposedly half the league including the reigning premiers have millions of dollars in cap space to throw around.

I just don’t think you can complain we’re not doing enough because we’ve missed out on a couple of lesser types in early September

[jazzadogs]

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Why we don't take part in these types of events is beyond me, and just even further convinces me we don't do enough. There can be no harm showing up to this and getting a gauge of who's doing what.

Dogs, Saints, Freo, Giants, Hawks. Strange group to not attend...but the Giants and Hawks are pretty shrewd operators. I wonder what the reasoning could be?

[doggies ftw]

Also FWIW best ITK on the other forum says we have approached Butts management but it’s dependent on Wilkies decision. I’d actually like us to target both tbh, I have no issue with Wilkie being the number 1 but just as happy with him being number 2 and freed up to intercept and play on a variety of different types. With Lobbs age & late season form a question mark (as Jones’ was the previous year) I’d love to go into round 1 with Butts, Wilkie & Lobb the 3 talls and JOD & Buss allowed to develop further at VFL level. They’ll be ready when they’re 24/25 to step up, if we lose Buss so be it - but maybe the club has enough confidence in JOD/Buss after another preseason and think Butts as well as Wilkie would take us out of any Butters approach.

Were also still looking good with Budarick, have approached Bond as well as obviously Butters, and Silvagni, Erasmus, Young (sounds like his offers from WC are too big unfortunately), Rowell & Bergman earlier in the season.

So really don’t see the narrative that we’re not doing enough, we’re doing heaps and clearly have recognised where we need to improve and most of these targets have started weeks if not months ago so can’t say we don’t approach in season either, Let’s just see how it plays out before we cry too much

Only position of need we haven’t really seemed to target is small forwards but we may have confidence in Cody, AJ & Dolan fixing that issue next year which I can agree with, especially if we think we’ll have access to El Souki next year

[Mofra]

Dogs, Saints, Freo, Giants, Hawks. Strange group to not attend...but the Giants and Hawks are pretty shrewd operators. I wonder what the reasoning could be?

The Saints are linked to about 357 players this year so it's not much of a conference without them.

[GVGjr]

Also FWIW best ITK on the other forum says we have approached Butts management but it’s dependent on Wilkies decision. I’d actually like us to target both tbh, I have no issue with Wilkie being the number 1 but just as happy with him being number 2 and freed up to intercept and play on a variety of different types. With Lobbs age & late season form a question mark (as Jones’ was the previous year) I’d love to go into round 1 with Butts, Wilkie & Lobb the 3 talls and JOD & Buss allowed to develop further at VFL level. They’ll be ready when they’re 24/25 to step up, if we lose Buss so be it - but maybe the club has enough confidence in JOD/Buss after another preseason and think Butts as well as Wilkie would take us out of any Butters approach.

Were also still looking good with Budarick, have approached Bond as well as obviously Butters, and Silvagni, Erasmus, Young (sounds like his offers from WC are too big unfortunately), Rowell & Bergman earlier in the season.

So really don’t see the narrative that we’re not doing enough, we’re doing heaps and clearly have recognised where we need to improve and most of these targets have started weeks if not months ago so can’t say we don’t approach in season either, Let’s just see how it plays out before we cry too much

Only position of need we haven’t really seemed to target is small forwards but we may have confidence in Cody, AJ & Dolan fixing that issue next year which I can agree with, especially if we think we’ll have access to El Souki next year

From my understanding we have tracked the performances of Jordan Butts throughout the season and we might have met with him and his manager a couple of times.
Who knows if we get him interested in a move but perhaps we will read a headline at sometime that the "Dogs are sniffing around Butts'

We've cast a wide net so we have been very active in the players who might be in the mood for a change.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

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Why we don't take part in these types of events is beyond me, and just even further convinces me we don't do enough. There can be no harm showing up to this and getting a gauge of who's doing what.

I'm guessing our group have looked at our recruiting objectives, plan and intel needs and have made a professional decision to not attend - they must perceive there is really no advantage to going I think it's more likely that we know who we want to speak to or have already spoken to , we've done our homework on likely list/draft spots of other teams, and outside of that, don't really care to do anything else that might make us more predictable or workable? That's my guess, otherwise yeah I am not sure why- maybe the food's no good at the event?

[bulldogsthru&thru]

We’ve literally prepared probably the biggest offer in clubs history to a top 5 player in the comp and are concurrently chasing another clubs VC, one of the premier defenders in the league, with a million dollar deal and people are still complaining about us not doing enough. We’ve always done our work behind the scenes not in the media, maybe our approach doesn’t work or more likely we’re just not a super attractive destination especially when supposedly half the league including the reigning premiers have millions of dollars in cap space to throw around.

I just don’t think you can complain we’re not doing enough because we’ve missed out on a couple of lesser types in early September

We haven't landed any one yet. Butters is a hope because "he was a bulldogs supporter" but far from reality. Competing with hawks and geelong has never ended well. Yeah we've shown the money to Wilkie but he's got 2 years left on his contract. Even if we convince him there's no way the saints let him go so it's not exactly realistic. It honestly surprises me to hear we're waiting for his response before looking elsewhere. I hope that's media bs.

I also don't know how this interest came about and if it was reactionary to Silvagni not choosing us. Budarick I've heard we haven't inquired.

None of us know at the end of the day. The doom and gloom is based on past history.