The great Travis Cloke debate

[jackcass]

[Pies4shaw]

When Cloke was Moore's age, he was young, learning, helped get Collingwood to a Preliminary Final and won the Copeland Trophy. When his father was a few days younger than him, he had 12 kicks, 8 marks, 5 handballs and 3 hitouts backing up Thommo (and kicked 7 goals).

[RudeBoy]

[Bucks5]

According to the Football Classified panel, Cloke only played well against the Giants because of the 'illegal' glove and he should have been hung and quartered for wearing it.

[Pies4shaw]

Essendon potted him to the AFL for it. Oh, the irony.

[Presti35]

Here was a topic that came up with a friend of mine...

Collingwood will straight swap Cloke to Richmond for Deledio....

My response was that this does not help either club, or player.

My friends then suggested that Collingwood will not feature heavily in the trade/free agency period.

I disagreed, as I think we'll be looking for draft picks and then a 2nd/3rd string ruck.

Friends also suggested that we cannot afford to lose too many talls. Again, I responded by pointing out that we are better off getting rid of players who are not helping improve the team. It sounds like we've brought back Brown. And Im open to trading Witts if it greatly improves our draft position and we can get a cheap ruckman (maybe Clarke?) to play behind Grundy/Cox.

Getting back to Cloke.... Will he play in our next Grand Final team? Its hard to say, but Im feeling like our next GF is some time away. So are we better off getting something for him now while he still has value?

What if North traded Petrie in 2012? Would they be better placed with a 23 year old player now, rather than a 33 year old? I guess it depends on who they would have drafted. But they would have given themselves a chance to upgrade their list.

What if Lions traded J Brown in 2010? He dropped off pretty heavily in his final years. Plenty of clubs would have taken him. I believe we were one of them. Would the Lions have been better off taking a first round pick? Yes.

What if Carlton didn't trade Fevola in 2009? Carlton got Henderson and pick 12. They got 100 gams out of Henderson before seeing him off to Geelong and they got Lucas at pick 12 who ended up going to WCE. If they got that pick 12 right (Fyfe went pick 20), you couldnt say it wasnt best for the club.

So I guess its always risky as draft picks dont always turn out to be great players, but at least you have the chance to find one. I wouldn't be trading him for a player of similar age (Deledio for example), but I would be interested in the best pick offered.

I said it earlier, trading Cloke is something that the club will look at very seriously. Whilst keeping him is not the worst option, the club would be insane not to find out what his value is to the other clubs.

[Piesnchess]

Methinks he has one more chance to redeem himself, v the weagles, if he fails badly this week, I think that's it for him now. He will be replaced by the big Yank, and we will look for a trade, Norf may grab him as Petrie is done, so we could swap him for say, Tarrant, who maybe handy down back for us.

[Mugwump]

[Presti35]

[Piesnchess]

I have a gut feeling he may boot four goals v the weagles, and redeem himself.

[Pies4shaw]

Or not.

He's played 243 games and kicked 437 goals. I don't think a player of his standing needs to "redeem himself" in a meaningless game near the end of an appalling season by the Club.

[Bob Sugar]

[Bucks2014]

[Presti35]

[Pies4shaw]

What if we don't keep him and he has another 57 games left in him?

Over recent years, I've thought Revolting, Hodge, Mitchell, Enright, Johnson etc were all finished - in most cases I reached that view because injuries seemed to have brought them to the end. They're all still playing and some of them have won premierships (or 3) since (including Johnson who won one while he shouldn't have been able to walk).