How Geelong tried but failed to lure Brownlow Medal contender Travis Boak from Port Adelaide
Every club talks to opposition players in the hope of landing a big fish. But no one goes about a recruiting raid like Geelong did with Travis Boak. This was as brazen as it gets. But why didn’t it work?
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Matthew Primus cannot remember a recruiting play like it in all his years in the AFL.
Peter Rohde reckons it smacked of desperation.
In July 2012, Geelong created headlines when it made an audacious interstate trip to convince Port Adelaide star Travis Boak to return home to the Victorian surf coast.
Cats coach Chris Scott, skipper Joel Selwood and vice-captain Jimmy Bartel flew into SA on a Sunday to meet the midfielder, who was out of contract at the end of that season and whose family home in Jan Juc was about 30 minutes from Kardinia Park.
It was hardly a covert operation.
In fact, at the time, Power chief executive Keith Thomas likened it to “arriving with shiny buttons and a brass band”.
TV cameras spotted the three Geelong leaders and word quickly filtered back to Port, where Primus was the senior coach, Rohde was football manager and Boak had won the best and fairest the previous year.
History says Boak has stayed loyal and heads into top-of-the-table Port’s huge clash with his former suitors at Metricon Stadium on Friday night as a Brownlow Medal contender.
But back then, when the Power was struggling and Geelong was reigning premier, it was a pivotal moment, in an era where player movement was evolving due to the AFL’s expansion, and with free agency set to be introduced at the end of that season.
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“It was an eye-opener,” Primus told News Corp this week.
“It was something I’d never done or seen as a player or a coach.
“All clubs talk to players, they’ll produce a video, get other players to ring them and Melbourne clubs probably do it a bit more because they can drive around the suburbs and visit each other.
“But to fly interstate and do it with their big boys showed how hard they wanted him.
“They took it to a level we weren’t too happy with.”
The Cats had been stung by losing favourite son Gary Ablett on a huge deal to the newly-formed Gold Coast Suns a year earlier and sought to make their own trade splash.
As Thomas admonished Geelong for not showing respect, Primus and Port players kept trying to get an answer from Boak, but remained in the dark.
Rohde called the Cats’ courting “a last roll of the dice”.
“That sort of stuff did happen a bit at that time and probably would’ve been guilty of it ourselves but wouldn’t have done it that blatantly,” Rohde remembered.
“We took it as a sign of their desperation – I’m sure they wouldn’t have done it if they thought they were going to get him.
“I remember getting phone calls from journalists saying the Geelong blokes were at the airport.
“I rang (then Cats football manager) Neil Balme, who’d coached me at Melbourne, and he didn’t deny it.
“I know Balmey really well and they weren’t doing it to offend anyone, they thought they may as well be in it to win it.
“They would had to have known they were going to get seen.
“When it came out it certainly put pressure on everyone to bring it (contract negotiations) to a head.”
So what did Rohde say to Boak after learning of the Cats’ brazen approach?
“I think I laughed – ‘you got caught’,” he said.
The last-ditch effort did not work.
Boak turned down the Cats and re-signed with Port on a two-year deal.
The contract was agreed to in September – after Primus was sacked – but the former senior coach recalled Boak telling teammates he was staying on a morning stroll before Port played Melbourne in Darwin, five days on from Geelong’s visit.
“Things weren’t going that well (that) year but the morale and energy that brought, knowing Travis had committed to the club, showed how much he meant to the playing group and club,” Primus said.
“There was a fair bit of roar on the foreshore there … and we went out a got a win that night, which were few and far between.
“I’m sure Travis probably would’ve looked hard and long about moving away but in any of my discussions and his behaviour and his training ethics, how he prepared and how he spoke, I never thought he was going to leave.
“Just the way he went about it, his love for making players better, making himself better and wanting the club to be better, I always thought he was going to stay strong, even though those were pretty bleak times.”
Rohde said the club was “very confident all the way along”.
“I know players say they’re going to stay and they end up going, but we always had good dialogue and Balmey pretty much said that to me: ‘we wanted to have one, last crack’,” he said.
“Travis said to me a number of times along the way it was just the pull of family and his mum at home, but he was very close to Robbie Gray, Paul Stewart and those sort of people, so he had just as much pull to stay.”
Geelong patron and former club president Frank Costa said in hindsight the Cats’ play for Boak, who went on to captain Port from 2013-18, “might have become a bit too public” and he did not think it was the right strategy.
“I don’t think the correct amount of thought went into it,” Costa told News Corp.
“Being at the airport with cameras there and everybody noticing … we were too keen to try to claim the prize back onto our list.
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“I could imagine it wouldn’t have gone over too well over there.
“A footballer of his quality with his home background in the Geelong district, I thought it would’ve been fabulous if we got him into our side, but it wasn’t to be.
“He’s a very good fellow and an absolutely top footballer.
“You can’t always have what you want.”
Primus said dual All-Australian Boak, who in March re-signed to the end of 2022 and could become the Power’s games record holder next year, had been enormous for the club.
“It’s great to see an outstanding person and player continuing to play at a high level,” he said.
“History says he made a great decision.”