AFL free agency: Brad Crouch joins St Kilda from Adelaide
A year ago, Adelaide could have traded Brad Crouch to Gold Coast for a draft bonanza – but only ended up with pick 23. Matt Turner explains what went wrong.
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When Adelaide folded in its game of poker with St Kilda, minutes before its free agency deadline on Wednesday, Brad Crouch was on the golf course.
Crouch, 26, was understood to be ecstatic that his wait to join the Saints was over after the Crows elected not to match his four-year contract offer – with a trigger for a fifth – of believed to be close to $700,000 per year.
At West Lakes, Adelaide officials might have wondered what could have been.
A year ago, the club had a chance to trade the midfielder to Gold Coast, possibly in exchange for two early picks, but baulked on the back of Crouch’s best-and-fairest season.
Instead, 25 minutes after receiving pick 23 as compensation for the restricted free agent on Wednesday, Crows head of football Adam Kelly was fronting a press conference justifying the club’s down-to-the-wire decision, which was slammed by some supporters on social media, and conceding it needed to work on its poker form.
Adelaide had two major problems in its attempted bluff of St Kilda.
It had already revealed it was holding an ace high, rather than the flush it wanted the Saints to believe it had.
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There was also the spectre of the pre-season draft.
The Crows talked tough publicly, insisting they would match St Kilda’s contract offer if they did not receive pick two as compensation from the AFL, in the hope the Saints would give Crouch enough money to trigger it.
Once the deal was lodged on Sunday, Adelaide knew it had to seek other options.
But as Kelly said on Wednesday, the club had made it clear for two seasons it would not offer a five-year contract to Crouch, who, for all his talent, had averaged 13 games per year across eight seasons due to injuries, including missing all of 2018 and five matches this campaign.
Add that to the Crows not doing more to talk up Crouch’s value or state their desperation to keep him during the season, and their cards were on the table.
It meant St Kilda list manager – and ex-Crow – James Gallagher could hold his nerve.
The Saints were adamant they would not trade their first pick in the draft, No. 17.
That left the Crows having to decide if it was worth the gamble to match the Saints’ deal for a player who did not want to be there and would have forced his way through to the pre-season draft, like Jack Martin did last year, if a trade was not struck, leaving Adelaide without any compensation.
Rebuilding after a first wooden spoon and wanting to strengthen their draft hand, rather than trade for fringe players,the Crows “exhausted all available options” but ultimately decided getting pick 23 instead of chasing one in the teens was, though not ideal, a better return than the alternative.
Even if it left them with egg on their face.
“We were adopting a public position in the hope that we would incentivise the Saints to make an offer that was such that it would’ve resulted in pick two,” Kelly said.
“Maybe I should watch a bit more of World Series Poker than I am watching footy at the moment because it didn’t work.”
It would be easy in hindsight to criticise the Crows for not trading Crouch to the Suns for a juicy haul a year ago.
But Adelaide could hardly have known that coronavirus would strike and change the football landscape, that Crouch would not finish in the top 10 of their best and fairest this year or that the club would be bottom.
If the Crows had netted pick two this week, that would have justified their decision to knock back a swap with the Suns.
The gap between two and 23 is significant, particularly given 23 will slide even further due to Next Generation Academy bids and other free agency compensation, but the picks clubs get handed from the league is decided by the market.
Kelly said Crouch getting caught with cocaine in the CBD in September, prompting a two-game AFL ban next season, would not have helped his value, but he was unsure if it influenced the Saints.
Adelaide, which holds the top pick for the first time in its history, can look to package No. 23 with some of its others, such as nine, 22, 33 or a future choice, to move up the draft order.
Or the club can back recruiting manager Hamish Ogilvie to secure a young gun with it.
Coincidentally, the Crows drafted Crouch’s brother, Matt, at pick 23 in 2013.
Four years later, he won the best and fairest and was an All-Australian as the club reached the grand final.
The older Crouch’s camp was always confident he would get to St Kilda, but they thought the Crows might match and seek a trade.
They were kept waiting, like the rest of the football world.
The Saints informed Crouch’s manager, Garry Winter, about 4.29pm – a minute before Adelaide’s deadline – that the North Ballarat Rebels product was theirs.
Winter then interrupted Crouch’s golf game to tell him the good news.
Crouch can now start planning for rounds on some of Melbourne’s best courses.
And the first of five seasons at a team that has built on its quality trade haul last year by adding another star recruit, this time for nothing.
In poker terms, the Saints and Crouch’s camp have won this pot.
But the pending arrival of SA-raised midfielder Jackson Hately from GWS and pick one in next month’s draft will go some way to re-establishing the Crows’ chip stack.
MORE AFL NEWS:
AFL trade period 2020: Adelaide opts against matching St Kilda’s free agency bid for Brad Crouch