Mark Bickley rates Adelaide losing Jake Lever and Mitch McGovern a “massive” list nightmare
Legend reveals why Adelaide losing Jake Lever and Mitch McGovern is a nightmare list scenario bigger than Patrick Dangerfield’s exit.
Losing future superstars Mitch McGovern and Jake Lever would prove Adelaide’s list doomsday scenario - dwarfing the impact of Patrick Dangerfield’s painful exit says club legend Mark Bickley.
Bickley says Adelaide has an impressive recent record of retaining Josh Jenkins, Taylor Walker and Wayne Milera but its premiership strategy would be compromised without long term bookends McGovern and Lever.
Adelaide’s premiership strategy could shatter without its long-term bookends - McGovern and
Lever, 21, has been linked to secret meetings with Melbourne while fielding multiple $800,000, five-year offers from Victorian clubs. McGovern, 22, is being wooed by five-year, $750,000 deals to return home to Perth - doubling the Crows’ reported two-year, $350,000 a season contract.
“You can lose one player and everyone can pick up slack. When you lose Lever and McGovern in three or four years time these guys are effectively Daniel Talia and Taylor Walker,” Bickley said.
“That is their future planning, you have to start again and there’s no guarantees you get someone of that quality. It would be massive.
“Dangerfield left a hole but Adelaide knew they had mature players who could step up in Matt and Brad Crouch.”
Bickley stressed Adelaide’s reported two-year offer at $350,000 annually to McGovern was yet to be verifed but if correct would be considered “laughable” in market terms.
“The average AFL wage is $370,000 a year so a 22-year-old key forward who is kicking 40 goals a season is not under the average wage,” Bickley told The Advertiser.
“I could understand why he and his management would get their noses out of joint if other clubs are offering five years at $750,000 like Fremantle.”
Adelaide has lost high profile talent over the past five years headlined by Dangerfield to Geelong, Jack Gunston choosing Hawthorn and Kurt Tippett’s controversial Sydney move. However Bickley says Adelaide losing its next spearhead, McGovern, could be harder to replace than Lever who would register his 50th game in Showdown 43 by overcoming a hamstring strain.
“Who is your next key forward at Adelaide? There is no-one there,” Bickley noted.
“The next key defender, you could arguably say is Alex Keath or Kyle Hartigan but there is no 21 year old who is a potential leader and first round pick.”
Adelaide - with a reputation for paying “unders’ - would live to regret tabling just $350,000 for two years to retain McGovern if the high-leaping forward flies. McGovern scooped a mark of the year contender and four goals - including one after the siren - to snare a draw for Adelaide against Collingwood at the MCG last Sunday.
Bickley discounted speculation Lever - pick No.14 in the 2014 national AFL draft - had met with Melbourne without management present as the race hots up to secure the 195cm key defender.
“We need to be careful. To think Lever, at 21, would be meeting another club without his manager would be comical. Simon Goodwin coaches Melbourne, has huge respect for Adelaide and to meet with him would be disrespectful,” said Bickley.