Nick Dal Santo says the trade talk surrounding Chad Wingard is more than a scare tactic from Port Adelaide
FORMER star midfielder Nick Dal Santo has given Port Adelaide fans a warning on Chad Wingard, saying he has never heard of a club putting a player for trade without meaning it.
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FORMER St Kilda champion Nick Dal Santo is confident the trade talk surrounding Port Adelaide’s Chad Wingard is real — and says history is proof.
Dal Santo, a 300-gamer with the Saints and the Kangaroos and now a respected commentator, dismissed suggestions the speculation surrounding Wingard’s future is a “wake-up call”, saying he had never heard of a club putting a player up for trade without meaning it.
Wingard, a dual All-Australian, is reported to be seeking lucrative offers from Victorian clubs with reports suggesting he could be tempted by close to $1 million a season.
“I would be shocked if it was a scare tactic to Chad (to put Wingard up for trade),” Dal Santo said. “In my time in football and knowing other players I can’t recall a time … where a player was put up for a possible trade for the purpose eventually getting him back.
“Just to sort of get him back in line, to get him on the straight and narrow and dedicated back to that football club and playing good football.
“I’ve never heard that before.”
Dal Santo, speaking on AFL Trade Radio, said he recalled players being dropped to the reserves to shape up.
But putting them on the trade table without any intention of trading them was unlikely.
“I was involved in 2008 when myself and Stephen Milne got dropped.
“That was a similar example.
“The purpose of that was to make us fall back in line.
“We weren’t playing great football and I’m not saying it wasn’t warranted at that stage.
“But that was a tactic and also disciplinary instruction to say, ‘If you don’t fall into line, you don’t play here. We’re not being held captive by talent.’
“So we served our week back in the reserves and then came back into the team.
“That happens all the time.
“But I have never heard, in the last 17 or 18 years being involved in AFL football, of a club putting somebody on the trade table to scare them to fall back in line at the club they’re initially at.”
Power coach Ken Hinkley has previously said other clubs would have to pay a fair price for Wingard.
“Chad is an enormous talent, he is not the type of player that you let out of your football club very easily,” Hinkley told Melbourne radio.
“And if I go through what I have dealt with in the past with (Port recruits) Paddy Ryder and Charlie Dixon, and we’ve given up first-round picks and a second-round pick and they’re the sort of numbers — two first-round picks.”