Trade secrets: Inside story of how Hawthorn secured Jaeger O’Meara and Tom Mitchell in 2016
A secret meeting involving Alastair Clarkson helped seal Jaeger O’Meara’s resolve to join Hawthorn. But he was nearly denied the move until a ninth-hour deal came through. Find out how Hawthorn got it done.
Hawthorn
Don't miss out on the headlines from Hawthorn. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Jaeger O’Meara was fighting back tears.
Standing in the cramped portable at Metricon Stadium that used to double as a player welfare room, he was delivering the news no one from the Gold Coast club wanted to hear.
He was seeking a trade.
Only days before the Suns’ final game of 2016, he told teammates and coaching staff it had been the hardest decision of his football life.
He hadn’t played an AFL game since 2014 due to an ongoing knee injury. But his 44 games from his first two seasons stamped him as arguably the best young midfielder in the game, franked by his 2013 Rising Star award.
Out of contract, O’Meara had been largely noncommittal about his future throughout a frustrating 2016 season.
But the more he was pushed for a decision — some close to the discussions insisted the push was too hard — the more he seemed to be headed into the opposite direction.
Doing most of the pushing was the Suns’ chairman Tony Cochrane, a successful businessman whose sharp edge and cutting turn of phrase jarred on many within the AFL industry, including within his own club.
Kayo is your ticket to the 2020 Toyota AFL Premiership Season. Watch every match of every round Live & On-Demand. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >
Cochrane was a man not accustomed to losing and he had no intention of giving up one of the club’s best assets without fitting recompense.
“If Tony hadn’t pushed so hard, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jaeger had stayed,” one source formerly connected to the Suns said this week.
O’Meara didn’t nominate a destination on that day. But after he concluded his farewell speech, teammates unexpectedly gave him a round of applause.
“The players loved him,” one insider told the Herald Sun. ”He was what Matt Rowell is to the Suns now.
“To be honest, it was only Steven May who said ‘Bulls---’ when there was a round of applause.”
Then the mood shifted further when Cochrane‘s distinctive voice interrupted from the sidelines.
“Tony just blew up,” a person who was in the room explained. “He (Cochrane) was fuming … he was saying, ‘this is f------ bulls---. Then he walked out.”
When the chairman re-entered moments later to address the entire playing group, O’Meara was leaving the room.
“Tony shut the door and unleashed on Jaeger,” a source said. ”He tore strips off him and his character. He said he was disloyal.
“It was his worst rant. You could see the players’ reactions as they sat listening to him, most of whom, if they had to pick a side, would have sided with Jaeger.
“I think it made a lot of (other) players’ decisions to leave easier after that.”
One eyewitness described it as “the darkest day in the club‘s history.”
The Herald Sun contacted Gold Coast this week for Cochrane’s version of events, but the club said he declined to comment.
Cochrane insisted if the Suns didn’t get what they wanted, neither would O’Meara.
He said at the time: “Jaeger is on the market to a club that can provide us compensation we are prepared to accept. Should an appropriate exchange not be met, he will have the option to enter the draft.”
‘EXPLORE OR PARK’
Hawthorn hatched a bold plan after its bid for a record-equalling fourth-successive flag ended in disappointment.
Bounded out of the 2016 finals in week two, the Hawks were already in the market for two rising star midfielders – Sydney’s Tom Mitchell and O’Meara. Now they had to produce a trade miracle.
Mitchell had been offered a five-year-deal at Sydney, but was looking to return to Melbourne.
O‘Meara nominated the Hawks as his preferred option on September 13.
No one saw what came next.
On the morning of the Hawks’ Peter Crimmins Medal count in early October, Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson went around to the house of his highly-decorated midfielder Sam Mitchell.
Famously, he asked if Mitchell would consider a move to West Coast – where he intended to become an assistant coach one day – for at least one season as a player.
As shocked as he was, Mitchell saw a potential upside.
The coach later texted three words — “Explore or Park?” — to his highly-decorated player. After discussing it with his wife Lyndall, Mitchell texted back: “Explore”.
When he won his fifth best and fairest that night, Mitchell essentially gave a farewell speech that masqueraded as a need for change at the Hawks.
“That night I spoke about how Hawthorn needed to regenerate,” Mitchell said in his book, Relentless. ”Very few people in the room knew that the change would involve me.”
Fellow Hawks midfielder Jordan Lewis had also been approached about a potential move. Initially, he wasn’t comfortable, but would later see the benefits of a longer-term deal with Melbourne.
Two champions midfielders were about to find a new home, freeing up salary cap pressure; now the Hawks had to find a way to bring in two new potential stars.
THE MITCHELL DEAL
The Hawks told O‘Meara’s then manager Colin Young it always planned to get the Mitchell deal done first.
Sydney didn’t want to lose Mitchell, but faced a salary cap squeeze.
He was one of the Swans’ best players in the losing 2016 Grand Final, but told the club in his exit interview the next week he was on the move.
Sydney’s Tom Harley told the Herald Sun recently: “He was a young player with a big future, but we had other senior midfielders in Josh Kennedy, Luke Parker and Dan Hannebery at the time.
“We wanted to keep him, but clearly he got a more attractive offer.
“It centred around pick 14. We were able to turn that into (picks) which we were able to turn into (Ollie) Florent and (Will) Hayward.”
“We never felt blindsided. We wanted to keep Tom, but we couldn’t do it.”
THE STALEMATE
A secret meeting with Clarkson and Hawks doctor Michael Makdissi sealed O’Meara’s resolve to join Hawthorn.
“Those two together convinced Jaeger they were the right team to take him forward. Mainly because of his knee, to get his knee right and make sure he can play next year (2017),” Young said.
Cochrane demanded the Hawks hand over “A graders” as the only compensation his club would consider for a player of O’Meara’s talent.
One person close to the discussion said the exercise was as much about “managing the chairman” as ”getting the best (the Suns) could get for Jaeger.
“I reckon Jaeger might have stayed (but for Cochrane), he backed him into a corner with his bombastic, ‘I don’t bluff’ bullsh---” the source said.
Premiership Hawks Luke Breust and Liam Shiel were mentioned as trade options, but neither player was interested in leaving.
Gold Coast then knocked back offers of picks 10 and 48, leading Cochrane to say: “They’ve promised this bloke the world and they’re going to hand him an atlas.”
The stalemate became so tense Clarkson flew to the Gold Coast as the trade time deadline loomed.
The four-time flag coach met with the Suns chairman early one Saturday morning at Cochrane’s waterside mansion.
They spoke for an hour in “a very entertaining” discussion.
“(Clarkson) outlined to me what he saw as my concerns going forward if I didn’t do the deal based on his experience,” Cochrane said. ”He tried to put the Hawthorn spin on it … I’ve got their opinion and unfortunately in this situation there’s a buyer and a seller.”
Some within the Suns’ organisation feared if a trade wasn’t reached, it would do Gold Coast damage in terms of future trade discussions.
THE LAST-MINUTE DEAL
Cochrane was defiant: the Suns had to be adequately compensated or O‘Meara was headed to wooden spooners Essendon in the pre-season draft.
On the last night before the trade window closed the Suns list management met for dinner, knowing a circuit breaker was needed.
When Hawthorn’s then list manager Graham Wright walked into Docklands on the morning of the final day of trading, he said: “We think we’re more progressed on the O’Meara deal than we were 24 hours ago.”
Time was ticking.
O‘Meara was in Melbourne that day awaiting a call. He dialled his manager’s number countless times that day.
Young said later: “(It was) an emotional rollercoaster the last few hours.”
Then came a breakthrough.
A side deal between Hawthorn and Carlton for a future second round pick almost 90 minutes before deadline provided a window of hope.
This allowed Hawthorn to send its own 2017 second-round pick to Gold Coast, along with pick No. 10 for O’Meara.
The deal was done with nine minutes to spare.
O‘Meara was delighted: “I called him (Young) about 17 times to get an idea of what was happening and then I was ecstatic when it officially got done.”
Young and Wright sat exhausted in one of the corporate boxes at Docklands in the moments after the paperwork was lodged.
The Hawks were happy to get their man; the Suns were glad it was over.
Young said this week: “I believe there were too many chefs in the kitchen (in the trade) and having too many chefs made it one of the most difficult trades I‘ve been a part of.”
Four years on, the Mitchell and O‘Meara deals have panned out well for the Hawks.
Mitchell is a Brownlow medallist.
O’Meara is one of the Hawks’ most important players, and is well on the way to regaining his status as one of the classiest midfielders in the game.
But Cochrane hasn’t forgiven or forgotten.
In an AFL podcast last year, he fired back: “Jaeger, personally, was really disappointing. He looked me in the eye and told me he was staying.”
O’Meara refuses to buy into a tit-for-tat with his former chairman.
He is content to let his footy do the talking.
MORE AFL NEWS:
AFL releases new fixture as Victorian clubs head to hubs in Queensland and NSW
Moneyball trade column: Collingwood father-son Nick Daicos could the No.1 pick in 2021 draft
Richmond and Western Bulldogs expect players to opt out of hubs
Originally published as Trade secrets: Inside story of how Hawthorn secured Jaeger O’Meara and Tom Mitchell in 2016