Rucci’s Monday Review: A new age of player movement
Player movement in the AFL is keenly encouraged by the league masters seeking a constantly changing top order in the premiership race. It also means the old themes of contracts, loyalty and no in-season trade plays are being challenged.
HOW times change. It was just 2016 when midfielder Lin Jong, then uncertain of his future at the Western Bulldogs, went on a mid-season tour of the Collingwood Football Club facilities near the MCG.
The fall-out fed the media cycle for days – and prompted Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge, as Jong recalled recently, to deliver “a big old spray … thankfully over the phone or I would have ended in tears just like my from my end-of-season review spray.”
Today, AFL senior coaches are breaking away from their teams to meet in-season with players (some on long-term contracts too) from rival teams – even while on road trips. Hawthorn last month sent lead coach Sam Mitchell to Perth to court West Coast defender Tom Barrass while his players returned to Melbourne to savour their win at Adelaide Oval.
By stark contrast to the fall-out from the Jong moment or the reaction during the 2012 season when Geelong coach Chris Scott and his entourage came to Adelaide on a Sunday morning to make a sales pitch to Port Adelaide midfielder Travis Boak, everyone just shrugged their shoulders on learning of Mitchell’s trip to Perth. There was no shock factor.
In mid-August 2010, All-Australian defender Nathan Bock arrived at West Lakes to confirm what had been well known for some time – he was taking up a “godfather offer” to be a member of the inaugural Gold Coast team in 2011. Although carrying a shoulder injury that would have stopped him playing again that season, Bock was told to immediately clear out his locker. As his then coach Neil Craig would say, Bock was now the “enemy”.
But during the past week, midfielder Alex Neal-Bullen has told his Melbourne team-mates and club leaders – and publicly explained – how he needs to walk away from his contract to seek a go-home trade to South Australia for family reasons. Unlike Bock, Neal-Bullen was eagerly kept in the clubhouse and on the selection whiteboard for the weekend’s matches.
And North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson pushed the boundaries again on Friday when he declared he would have his recruiting team chase Brownlow Medallist midfielder Ollie Wines from Port Adelaide, among others including Jack Viney at Melbourne.
Times have certainly changed …
There is now the acceptance that list-management challenges are so critical to an AFL club’s on-field fortunes – and their off-field images as “destination clubs” – that meetings with coaches, visits of club facilities and public declaration of an intent to seek a trade will unfold during a season. Some upcoming free agents will have these moments unfold two years in advance of their contracts expiring.
“We’re better than that now,” says Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley when noting the maturity in today’s game when compared with the Jong and Bock moments from recent decades.
The AFL is closer to the NRL landscape and the reality of professional sports in the USA and Europe. And in an era when there are weekly – if not daily – updates on the “gettable” players, there is more and more understanding that players are not waiting until October to decide their futures.
There is excitement from a fan base that savours the prospect of scoring a prize recruit from an AFL rival – as Port Adelaide supporters have for the past two trade periods with Jason Horne-Francis (North Melbourne), Jordon Sweet (Western Bulldogs), Ivan Soldo (Richmond), Esava Ratugolea (Geelong) and Brandon Zerk-Thatcher (Essendon).
There is anxiety when your own are linked to trades or go-home exits, as Port Adelaide fans know this year with Dan Houston and – until last week – Miles Bergman who reassured all by saying: “Just to clarify – I am staying at Port Adelaide; I will be here for sure next year.” This was in response to the bushfire set off in those “trade” updates by Bergman a week earlier expressing the inevitable emotions of missing family and friends in Melbourne.
If you take, you also need to expect to be picked off – that is the reality of a professional game with salary caps, drafts, free agency etc etc.
“We talk to other players,” admits Hinkley. “We try to recruit every year. It is part of the game now. And there are no secrets .. I am okay with it. And I think (the trade speculation) is overplayed.
“It is overblown …
“We are in the conversation of improving our list. We would talk to every available South Australian talent that wants to return home. And we face every Victorian boy on our list or any interstate boy (having the same conversations with rival clubs) if they want to go home.”
At Gold Coast is a South Australian top-two draftee – Jack Lukosius – who has more than once met clubs in Adelaide. But the versatile forward has repeatedly stayed loyal to the Queensland team that last week had coach Damien Harwick label Lukosius as a “required player” even though he is not being selected for AFL action.
Immediately, Lukosius is “gettable” and hot property in Adelaide regardless of his contract with Gold Coast.
“You would expect (Port Adelaide to again speak with Lukosius); he is a South Australian and if he becomes available, we would talk to him as we would to every available South Australian talent that is wanting to return home,” says Hinkley.
“And we face the same challenge with clubs talking to our players who were drafted from interstate …”
Times have changed. Trade rules have changed. Contracts seem less binding than ever. And there is the question on whether – particularly with the introduction of free agency at the end of 2012 – player power has swung too far and needs to be redressed with “free trading”, that is – clubs trading contracted players with no player having veto power on the deals.
Port Adelaide list manager Jason Cripps put this on the agenda during the 2018 trade period.
Cripps put the AFL executive to deep-think mode saying: “I have no problem with players who are contracted (and) testing the market (as early as a year before the contract expires). But we need to get to the position where clubs can trade players who are contracted – and trade them to their choice of club; not always have the choice decided by the player.
“If we are going to continue down the path with free agency – and reduce (from eight years) when a player becomes eligible for free agency, the power balance needs to move back to the clubs. The power should be with the club in trading contracted players.”
Times will keep changing!
