Just how far can the additions of Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper take Richmond?
Jon Ralph
HeraldSun
September 2022
Next season Jack Riewoldt will play at Richmond on a contract as much as $175,000 less than former Tiger Callum Coleman-Jones, who landed at Arden St this year.
For comparison, Riewoldt has three flags, three Coleman Medals, 11 Richmond goalkicking trophies and 755 goals to Coleman-Jones’ 19 games and 16 goals.
As Riewoldt said on Friday, the chase for the flag is one of the primary reasons he is playing on, having confided to good mate Richie Porte on a charity bike ride over summer this would be his last year.
But it is another example of the chasm between the AFL’s haves and have nots, with Riewoldt prepared to play for $300,000 and the Tigers using the 2022 second-round pick they secured for Coleman-Jones to help nab GWS mids Tim Taranto and Jacob Hopper.
The Tigers already look top-four bound next year, and what is to say in 2025, when Dustin Martin’s $1.3 million falls off their books, they won’t go out and find another Tom Lynch-style free agent to succeed him.
So Richmond are the big winners already from the trade period.
And yet surely by the time the Roos are handed a suite of picks from their special assistance request, the AFL will have recognised the extraordinary equalisation challenge the league is facing.
Whether it is a priority selection before the No.1 overall draft selection or a suite of early mid-first-round or end-of-first-round picks, the league will be fully aware of the dangers of doing too little.
The draft and salary cap are supposed to create a boom-bust cycle, but on current draft position the Roos will take picks one and 55 to the draft after a two-win year and Richmond will add Hopper and Taranto and also try to draft a developing young tall.
The AFL will have to think seriously about the Roos securing a pre-draft priority pick to secure the best two kids in the land if they actually want them to improve quickly enough to be competitive as the vast TV rights deal kicks in for 2025.
After all, the AFL is nothing if it is not a money-making organisation and it will be desperate for nine competitive games in coming years before Tasmania enters the competition as early as 2026.
Not only are Gold Coast and GWS gutted by established clubs on a yearly basis —Hopper and Taranto join Suns star Izak Rankine in moving back to traditional teams — the old national draft mechanism just doesn’t work like it used to.
Richmond win the 2017 flag and 12 months later add Gold Coast free agent Lynch.
Then they prey on the Giants salary cap weakness — created by the lack of COLA and huge rival offers for established stars — to drag out Taranto and Hopper.
Hopper wants to come to the bright lights of Richmond and who could blame him after he played in front of crowds of 9010, 7772 and 7338 in three of his last five GWS games.
Some of the Giants’ salary cap issues are self-inflicted, but as the AFL considers North Melbourne’s priority pick submission in Grand Final week Richmond’s trade heist will surely weigh heavily on the minds of the AFL.
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