Not worried Grundy lowers his scores enough to drop $100k or more and lots pick Gawn up then when/if he get R/F.
Not really, if Gawn's role is that bad the first couple of weeks, I'll just trade him out, if it's not then the pick was good.
I'm seeing a lot of FOMO with Gawn, what's changed? Is it his showing against the Tigers? I'm guessing yes.
$622k is still a lot to pay for someone that is going to be sharing more ruck time with Grundy than what he did with Jackson last year. That being said, he still scored ok for 2022 but had 8 scores under 92.
My gut says he'll have some big scores this year, but the propensity to trash his price is higher with Grundy in. It's a risk, but I'm still going to fade him until at least rnd 6 when I reckon I'll have a better idea.
Basically I have no idea on the other rucks, I'm only really considering 3 others but there's definitely cases for another couple on top of them and after using a ton of trades there I'm happy to lose some cash on a guy that's likely to be a keeper to get a sighter on the rest of the field.
As I mentioned, if he's terrible then I just burn the trade to whoever looks the right answer at round 3.
I think it's worth noting for all the talk of Grundy taking the ruck, he's not very good at the intercept mark thing either so I can actually see Gawn effectively playing a HF role (like he did in the preseason game) and flanking behind the play when Grundy is rucking. McDonald took a lot of their F50 ruck contests which suggests they'd prefer Gawn behind the ball to in those contests, which makes sense, he's a freaking great intercept player and allows Lever and May to cheat cover even more as well.
Push comes to shove, Gawn in the ruck is going to happen because he's the better player by a fair margin.
Plus, I can't understate that Grundy has found a lot of injuries the last couple of years, the odds at this point definitely say he gets injured at some point, if that was round 3, Gawn is going to be a very hard player to buy come round 6 or 7. For me that chance is definitely worth considering because I don't think Witts, English or even Darcy (especially with Jackson) can match Gawn's scoring if he does end up the lone ruck.
FWIW, I think fading him is absolutely a solid play, especially if, unlike me, you've got any kind of read or feel on who is going to be the top ruck. The reality is that the most likely outcome is he's an F6 pick as a starter, the potential to be much more than that and the uncertainty at R1 for me, makes that an acceptable outcome but I'll be the first to admit, it doesn't make for a great pick. Obviously I'm hoping for one of the better scenarios when making the pick but my realistic outcome definitely supports not starting him if you've got an alternative you like.
