As you touched on, Geelong is a real destination club these days, allowing them to attract high quality free agents and trade targets to a higher degree than most others. This competitive advantage allows them to continually rebuild/replenish on the run, without ever having to bottom out (not that they have ever needed to anyway). Might not be premiership material for a few years, but don't think they will be too far off the pace either. Definitely can't see them falling away hard and into the bottom 4, like some seem to be almost wishfully predicting.
Will be interesting to see if they can continue to get top level players from other teams over the next few years. Between the beginning of 2021 to 2022, they got Jeremy Cameron, Issac Smith and Tyson Stengle, all highly important pieces to their grand final run.
Oisin Mullin has all the attributes of a successful player physically, he just needs game time to develop his feel for the game. Kolo doesn’t seem as necessary if we get in O’Sullivan as the third key defender so I think Oisin can come in for him at times and also whenever we may have an injury or whatever.
Their challenges going forward as I see it. 1- They will be losing (or have lost) very high end talent (Selwood, Hawkins, Blicavs, Dangerfield, Cameron & even Smith) which is impossible to recruit or trade back in because those types require 2 first round draft picks in a trade. 2. Will they still be able to attract trade talent if they are not right at the pointy end of the ladder, yes locals will want to head back but most players want success. 3. Other teams have been able to stockpile young talent and should go past the cats. They will need 2 or 3 of their existing young players to make huge jumps into being elite players and not just role players. Players like Holmes, DeKoning, Bruhn, Bowes, Conway, both Henry's & Clark would need to be A graders to give them a solid base to trade in the rest. Going to be very hard to replace Hawkins & Cameron.....they will need luck or hopefully Stephen wells has been hiding one or 2 in the local Geelong leagues or better still a couple that qualify as cat B rookies....hahaha
They will be bottom 8 for a number of years. The young talent is minimal and the middle bracket is non existent. Cats and tigers will need more than a miracle in the next 5 years to be competitive with many other clubs that have a core of talent that far out ways the cats. Destination clubs change and rapidly.
@@tonewasleyCats are there about with a great doctors no injuries but are no threat this year. How’s it looking next year ? Go look deep into the list. Tigers are in serious strife