Liam Pickering reveals Gary Ablett would still be at Geelong had the Cats renegotiated his contract in 2010

GARY Ablett would still be at Geelong if the club had been prepared to renegotiate his final Cats’ contract before Gold Coast swooped, according to his manager Liam Pickering.

GARY Ablett would still be at Geelong if the club had been prepared to renegotiate his final Cats’ contract before Gold Coast swooped, according to his manager Liam Pickering.

And Pickering has revealed he believed the AFL would have tried to scuttle Lance Franklin’s move to Sydney had it emerged earlier that the Swans — and not Greater Western Sydney — was his preferred destination.

The influential player manager and former Geelong and North Melbourne player makes the claims on Open Mike, which will screen at 8.30pm on Tuesday on Fox Footy, as he speaks about the three of the biggest moves in AFL football.

Pickering was involved in three multi-million deals — estimated to be worth around $23 million — involving Ablett’s move to the Gold Coast, Franklin’s shift to Sydney and Tom Boyd’s trade to the Western Bulldogs.

Pickering said the Cats had the chance to extend Ablett’s arrangement with the club before the end of 2010, but chose to wait, owing to fears they would have to lose one or two players as a result of the renegotiation.

“He had a contract signed with his former manager that locked him in for that whole five year period (2006-2010),” Pickering said.

Gary Ablett might never have been in a position to go to Gold Coast had Geelong renegotiated his contract before the end of 2010. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

“He was the best player in the game and he wasn’t even the highest paid player at Geelong. So over that three or four years leading into when he did leave, I had numerous discussions with (Geelong chief executive) Brian Cook and numerous discussions with (then Cats football manager) Neil Balme about redoing his contract.

“But the problem was that the Cats were going that well that they would have to lose one or two players to do it.

“So if they had rejigged (Ablett’s) contract ... I doubt he would ever have been in a position to go back to the Gold Coast.”

He doubts the dual Brownlow Medallist will ever return to Simonds Stadium as a player: “It would have to take something extraordinary and I don’t see it happening.”

Pickering said he had initially advised his former client Franklin that from a pure football sense he should have stayed with Hawthorn, but is now pleased to see him doing so well in Sydney.

He confirmed he and Franklin had met with the Swans early in 2013, but no commitments were made, and he knew if the details of the interest had been revealed, the free agency deal would be in serious jeopardy.

“If the AFL had’ve got wind of him potentially going to Sydney, the deal wouldn’t have been done, because they wanted him at the Giants (as) that was their baby,” he said.

Lance Franklin and Liam Pickering met with Sydney in early 2013 before he chose to leave the Hawks at the end of that season. Picture: Mark Evans

“There was an investigation to tick it off. It was all in the salary cap, they were doing nothing wrong. He was a restricted free agent and in fact Hawthorn could have matched the deal ... they chose not to.

“(But) I have got absolutely no doubt that the first thing GWS would have done (if they found out earlier) was go to the AFL. Every club would have been bleeding about it because (Sydney) had just signed (Kurt) Tippett.

“There certainly would have been a massive issue over it.”

Pickering no longer manages Franklin, but still receives sizeable commission on his $10 million nine-year deal with the Swans.

He revealed that in his last year in Melbourne, Franklin moved into an apartment and out of his home — leaving it empty — because of the media interest in him.

He insisted 20-year-old Boyd, whose seven-year deal is believed to be worth $6 million, would prove value for money for the Bulldogs in the future.

“I have got absolutely no doubt that he is going to be a star,” he said. “He is going to be a very good player ... he will be worth the investment.”

If the Giants had not relented and traded Boyd to the Whitten Oval at the end of his first year, the young forward would have left at the end of the following season.

Liam Pickering says Tom Boyd would have left GWS the following season had GWS not traded him to the Bulldogs ahead of 2015. Picture: Michael Klein

“We were going to commit to the Western Bulldogs for the following year, not in writing as such, but Tom would have played his year out (with GWS) and he would have moved on,” he said.

“Originally the Giants said there was no way they would trade him, so we basically called them out on it.”

He confirmed the interest from the Bulldogs via a casual conversation with list manager Jason McCartney at a under 16s carnival in 2014, but it intensified when Ryan Griffen walked out of the Dogs and requested a trade to the Giants.

It led to meetings with the Bulldogs and Boyd and his father at the home of president Peter Gordon.

“I did my job, they came with an initial offer and we got to the stage where we thought it was going to happen, and we got the number to what we wanted to get it to,” he said.

Originally published as Liam Pickering reveals Gary Ablett would still be at Geelong had the Cats renegotiated his contract in 2010