AFLW trade week starts on Monday and the Crows will have thing on their wishlist: to keep their grand final team together

As AFLW trade talks start on Monday, the Crows will be hoping their football culture and grand final win will be able to keep the team together.

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The Crows will go into Monday’s AFLW trade talks with one thing marked on their “to do” list: keep the grand final winning team together.

But they are preparing for a raid on their talent as the 10-day sign and trade period gets underway from 9.30am on Monday at Marvel Stadium.

Crows head of football operations Phil Harper said with the four new expansion teams (Gold Coast, West Coast, St Kilda and Richmond) each able to sign up to 12 players from other clubs — four of them can be Adelaide players — that the Crows’ talented squad would be of interest.

“If those expansion clubs weren’t looking at some of our players they would be negligent in their duty,” Harper said. “We just hope that we’ve built a culture and learning environment they’re comfortable with and they want to stay.

“But they’re all open for people approaching them and people wanting them to play for them and we will try and back in our culture that we’ll be able to retain them and they’ll want to have more of what they had this year with the unbelievable, powerful football they played.”

By the end of trade week, on April 18, under AFL rules, the Crows will have had to trim their list from 30 to 22 plus a possible two rookies.

Crows co-captain Chelsea Randall in action in the 2019 Grand Final match between Adelaide and Carlton at Adelaide Oval. Picture: Michael Willson/AFL Photos

“It’s really difficult,” Harper said. “We probably don’t want to cut a minimum of six players from our list because we think a lot of them have contributed, even the ones who didn’t play in the grand final.”

The names being tossed around inside football circles as potential targets for interstate clubs include forwards Stevie-Lee Thompson and Eloise Jones and fullback Sarah Allan.

One name that is off the trade table, however, is co-captain Chelsea Randall who surprised team-mates at Friday night’s best and fairest by announcing she was signing on for another year.

This will please the club considering fellow co-captain Erin Phillips is still tossing up her future after tearing her ACL in the grand final and will undergo knee surgery early this week. To have lost both their captains would have been devastating for the premiers.

Harper praised Randall’s decision. “Chelsea’s been our rock … the constant throughout our three years and she’s been a huge part of building the culture,” he said.

While Randall decided not to return home to Perth, fellow West Australian Renee Forth could decide to, but Harper said she would be offered a contract and the club hoped the midfielder would stay.

Harper said discussions were yet to take place with fan favourite Sarah Perkins who played two games in 2019 and will moving back to Melbourne in the off-season, as she did last year.

Sarah Perkins played two games for the Crows this AFLW season. PHOTO: AAP Image/Hamish Blair

New recruit for 2019, Renee Forth, impressed after coming to Adelaide after a trade deal with GWS. PHOTO: AAP Image/David Mauriz

“She hasn’t played as many games this season as she’d possibly wanted to … we’ll have discussions with her in the next few days and work out what she wants and what we’re prepared to do.

“A lot are a little bit in a holding pattern. We’ve only had a few days after winning a premiership; win a premiership, celebrate it and do list management all in a week.”

A new feature of the AFLW from the 2020 season is that clubs can now offer players either one- or two-year contracts. Up until now all players were on single-year deals.

Harper welcomed that move. “Certainly, with the young players, we’ll be able to show some faith in them and reward them with multi-year deals, which to me, will be a good thing for them and a good thing for us,” he said.