Why has Adelaide Crow Josh Jenkins been relegated to AFL’s outer?
Out-of-favour Crows forward Josh Jenkins had AFL clubs rushing to sign him away from the Adelaide in 2016. But in this trade period, there is a hard sell to find him a new team.
Michelangelo Rucci
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Three years ago Josh Jenkins had AFL clubs throwing big money at his feet — and “job security”. Brisbane was offering $800,000 a year — for five seasons.
Impressive considering just five years earlier the so-called basketball convert was dumped from the Essendon rookie list after the Bombers ended their project punt on the 197cm Jenkins within 12 months. This allowed Crows recruiting chief Hamish Ogilvie to polish another surprise signing from the delisted bargain bin.
Today, Jenkins — even with the one of the league’s best and most powerful player management teams in his corner — is not a priority contender in the AFL trade period as the ruckman-forward seeks a new club.
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And it is not the two years remaining on his five-season contract at Adelaide — with at least $1.2 million in salary — that seems to have AFL recruiting and list managers turning up their noses at the 30-year-old Victorian. More so when Jenkins is prepared to heavily sacrifice his big salary to get away from West Lakes where he has been put on the plank.
Not even Geelong, with its needs for more options in attack, will consider reuniting Jenkins with his former Crows team-mate and soul mate Patrick Dangerfield.
In a week in which former St Kilda captain Nick Riewoldt questioned if the AFL nation was mature enough to deal with players meeting rival clubs in-season — as noted with Essendon forward Joe Daniher’s “cup of coffee” with Sydney chief executive Tom Harley — the answer is very clear on how the game feels about Jenkins.
He is a generation before his time — not as a player on the field but with his presentation as an AFL quote machine off the park. He is all the AFL Players’ Association keeps promising — as an open access, forthright speaker — while the AFLPA union members seek to collect a greater share of the game’s riches that are boosted by a forever-growing media profile.
As a player, Jenkins has played 147 AFL games with Adelaide since 2012. He has kicked 296 goals — a two-goal-a-game player, as his manager Paul Connors notes. Jenkins also has pinch-hit in the ruck. He was an All-Australian nominee in 2016 (while kicking 62 goals, his only season of 50-plus goals). He was Adelaide’s leading goalkicker last year.
Connors says Jenkins being “30 is the new 27”. And still — unlike in 2016 — there is no rush to take Jenkins from Adelaide, even with the Crows leaving him on the verge at West Lakes for the annual October hard-refuse collection.
So is it the lip that makes Jenkins the AFL equivalent to the American sports professionals he knows so well and is admiring in his end-of-season holiday to the USA while Connors seeks a new home for his “misunderstood” client?
Of his media profile being stronger than his playing image or his voice being one of the loudest in the changerooms, Jenkins says: “I stand up for what I feel is right.
“I guess that can be misconstrued as being combative or stepping outside the bounds. I just speak up for what is right and speak for those in the group or who don’t feel as comfortable in speaking.”
Leading player agent, Liam Pickering (the man who delivered Lance Franklin from Hawthorn to the Swans), notes there are differing reactions to Jenkins and Dangerfield as they put themselves on Denis Pagan’s so-called “Media Street”.
“Paddy D is as out there as anybody — and he backs it up with the way he plays,” Pickering said on SEN1629 this week. “But when you are not going as well — not at the top of your game — it can come back to bite you on the backside.
“I don’t think people dislike JJ at all. That (media profile) should not put clubs off Josh because he is a ripping fella. But he can be a bit polarising — and if you don’t know the guy, you’ll think he is being quite opinionated.”
Someone certainly went off Jenkins at Adelaide to the point that even with coach Don Pyke gone — and more to the point senior assistant Scott Camporeale now moved on — the Crows’ big signing from 2016 cannot stay at West Lakes.
Headline machine one day, footnote soon after.