Re: Which clubs have been winning from the expansion teams:
I remember at the time I thought we would struggle to recover from being bad at the same time as expansion - it pushed back what should have been good draft picks (e.g. Clay Smith being pick 15, when in a normal season we would have had pick 5), and I thought it would make it a lot harder to bring in quality players.
When you look back at the 2012 ladder, the bottom 7 spots were (starting in 12th) Richmond, Brisbane, Port, Dogs, Melbourne, Gold Coast, GWS. Those teams have now contributed for 5 flags, 7 grand final appearances and a lot of prelim finals. So my fears were not really justified at all.
I remember at the time I thought we would struggle to recover from being bad at the same time as expansion - it pushed back what should have been good draft picks (e.g. Clay Smith being pick 15, when in a normal season we would have had pick 5), and I thought it would make it a lot harder to bring in quality players.
When you look back at the 2012 ladder, the bottom 7 spots were (starting in 12th) Richmond, Brisbane, Port, Dogs, Melbourne, Gold Coast, GWS. Those teams have now contributed for 5 flags, 7 grand final appearances and a lot of prelim finals. So my fears were not really justified at all.
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