Moneyball: All the latest AFL trade and contract murmurs

Richmond premiership star Alex Rance is all set to make his return to the game. Find out where he will be playing next.

Richmond premiership star Alex Rance is set to make his football return next weekend in a country football clash in northern Victoria.

Rance, 31, has not played since rupturing his ACL in Round 1, 2019 but has agreed to line up for Seymour in the Goulburn Valley Football League on Saturday, May 29.

The match against Mooroopna at Seymour’s Kings Park is a one-off for now, but Rance has not ruled out playing more matches for the Lions.

Seymour assistant coach Ben Clifton works with Rance at the former Tiger’s academy in Essendon.

“They’ve been associates and mates for a while,” Seymour president Gerard O’Sullivan told the Herald Sun.

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Alex Rance will play for Seymour next weekend. Photo: Seymour Football Club.

“Ben’s convinced him to come up and have a game at Seymour and we hope he likes it here and he might stick on and play the season here.

“At the moment it is just one game, but it potentially could be more than a one-off. We’ll just see if he likes the environment and we’ll see where he goes from there.”

O’Sullivan said the announcement had already created plenty of interest around the town and a larger-than-normal crowd was expected for next weekend’s match.

“The town’s abuzz already. It will be good for our footy club, good for our town and good for the Goulburn Valley,” O’Sullivan said.

“We’ll ring up the local butcher and the local pub and we’ll make sure we’ve got a bit more food and drinks for them.”

Rance had been planning to play two matches for Swan Valley in the Perth Football League earlier this month, but state border issues meant those plans fell through.

A 2017 premiership player with the Tigers, the key defender was also a five-time All-Australian and won Richmond’s best and fairest in 2015.

Alex Rance (middle) with his Tiger teammates at the 2019 Grand Final. Picture: Getty Images

CAP SPACE CONUNDRUM: WHAT IF HARRY WANTS SEVEN FIGURES?

Jon Ralph

As Harry McKay winced with pain and was escorted into the Carlton rooms at the MCG on Sunday, the Blues legends and old-timers held their collective breath.

Was a player leading the Coleman Medal about to be cut down by a nagging injury like so often before?

As three-time premiership player Mark Maclure said on Thursday: “When he got laid down and came back on, I thought ‘don’t come back on and go half-hearted … You have got to compete or we have no hope of winning’.”

Carlton lost, but McKay won a new band of admirers as he ignored his shoulder injury to extend his Coleman Medal lead to six with a three-goal haul.

Harry McKay was forced from the field with a shoulder injury against the Dees. Picture: Michael Klein

And he checked off the final question mark for a Carlton list management committee that must hand him a massive deal to remain at the club.

“I loved it,” Maclure said.

“I was calling it for ABC Radio and when he got hurt, I said ‘this is the time for him to stand up and show what he’s got’, and he did.

“He was hurt, and he still played really well. I was proud of him.

“The question you ask is can he carry an injury, can he do it when he’s sore?

“That goal from outside 50, you thought ‘this kid has some real talent’.

Out of a possible 104 games, McKay has missed 24 with injury to play 57 AFL matches and 23 in the VFL.

But in playing injured for weeks, as well as performing while badly sick in the victory over Essendon, he has developed a new-found resilience.

If you are going to pay a bloke upwards of $800,000 a year, and potentially $1 million, you want to know he will fight through pain.

McKay has as much leverage to extract a seven-figure-per-year deal as a key forward has had in years.

Harry McKay has developed into one of the best forwards in the game. Picture: AFL Photos/Getty Images

The Blues have significant doubts over Charlie Curnow’s future, have got little from Mitch McGovern, and have rival clubs like North Melbourne with massive cap space hunting key forwards.

McKay has beaten up on poor rivals such as Fremantle without its recognised backman, but he did it on the best defender in the AFL, Steven May, last weekend.

What remains to be seen is whether he will want every dollar owed to him, and he is worth $1 million a year at age 23, or do what Patrick Cripps has done this month.

Cripps’ contract is all but done, but he has always ­accepted less to keep the list together.

Ironically, the Eagles didn’t have room to lure the WA boy home after splurging on Jeremy McGovern’s $1.2 million-a-year deal.

No other defender has ever secured that kind of deal, and yet few other defenders, apart from Alex Rance, have won four ­consecutive All-Australian jumpers and played a key part in a Grand Final victory like McGovern.

It is the age-old conundrum for stars like McKay.

His management will know they could screw Carlton to the wall when talks begin in coming weeks.

Mitch McGovern has not lived up to his massive contract. Picture: Getty Images

Or they find that perfect price point on a three-year deal to get him to free agency while setting him up for the bumper deal when he hits 26. Call it $2.7 million, with Carlton still having the cash to go after another ­midfielder, especially with McGovern surely in line for a massive pay cut when his deal expires in two years.

Champion Data stats show when McKay is targeted inside 50, they score 50 per cent of the time. He is ranked sixth of the top 50 forwards in that stat.

Carlton is confident he is staying, with coach David Teague one of many noticing that new-found resilience.

“I’m pretty confident the deal will get done there too,” teague said.

“The last couple of weeks he has still been able to play a really important role for us.

“A couple of weeks ago he was crook and he did it as well. He has shown some real growth as a footballer.”

Fourteen years ago Carlton lost Josh Kennedy to West Coast in the Chris Judd deal, and watched him win seven club goalkicking titles and kick 654 goals.

This time they won’t let go of their spearhead.

Originally published as Moneyball: All the latest AFL trade and contract murmurs