AFL trade news: Hawks fail to move veteran quartet with dreams of improving draft hand
The Hawks have openly shopped their veteran stars with little interest from rival clubs - will the club now have issues with fractured relationships?
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Hawthorn stars will return to the club next year expecting to maintain a strong relationship with coach Sam Mitchell despite the Hawks’ ego-bruising move of putting four veterans on the trade table.
Unless there is an unexpected shock development on the last day of the trade period on Wednesday all of Tom Mitchell, Chad Wingard, Jack Gunston and Jaeger O’Meara will remain in the brown and gold.
It means the Hawks’ much-spruiked objective of radically improving its draft hand of pick 5, 21 and 24 will have failed.
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Denver Grainger-Barrass is the only top 10 player drafted by the Hawks on the club’s list.
But crucially, the Herald Sun understands the senior quartet remain comfortable with the club’s conduct after it was declared there were few untouchables on the club’s list under Mitchell’s direction.
Tom Mitchell had no takers, Wingard knocked back interest from Greater Western Sydney, O’Meara stirred a slight interest from port Adelaide, while Gunston has entered the wrong age bracket to secure a quality pick in return.
Jon Ceglar is still likely to find his way to Geelong as part of a deal that would see Cats ruck-forward Darcy Fort move to the Lions and Pies ruckman Max Lynch arrive at Waverley.
The Giants were only interested in Wingard because Hawthorn would have paid a large chunk of his salary in exchange for pick 13 but Gunston turns 30 on Saturday and is coming off back surgery.
So moving him for a late or mid-range pick with the Hawks paying some of his salary makes little sense to Hawthorn.
Port Adelaide is an admirer of O’Meara after Ken Hinkley coached him at Gold Coast, with ex-St Kilda star Leigh Montagna urging the Power to hand over an early pick for the inside mid.
But the Power are bullish about the centre-square potential of Connor Rozee, Zak Butters and Xavier Duursma and believe they will spend serious time in the midfield next year.
Butters has already shown his clearance exploits, Rozee needs to build his tank to spend more time as an onballer and wingman Duursma showed he could play centre square mid when returning through the SANFL from injury.
While the Power would seem to need clearance depth after a preliminary final smacking they believe their season will rise and fall on the improvement of young stars like that trio.
Hawthorn’s football boss Rob McCartney said this week the Hawthorn players had all the power in potential moves as the club assessed rival interest.
“Are we open and curious and open minded if someone comes to us? For mine, the most important part of all this is they are contracted players,” he said.
“If something comes up, the first point of reference needs to be a conversation with the player. Are you interested in exploring? They have all the power, they should have their hands on the steering wheel. If it is that they have no interest, the story is over.
“They are humans first and too often we tend to sometimes through the media forget these guys go home to families, have mums and dads reading the papers so I think it’s really important we don’t lose sight of the human side.
“In the way we deal with these things, if we do them the justice they deserve, its a conversation they feel like they have some power in
The four players, if anything was to happen they would have power in that conversation.”
Wingard delivers answer to shock trade interest
Hawthorn star Chad Wingard has knocked back interest from Greater Western Sydney to join the Giants next season.
News Corp has confirmed Wingard has made it clear he does not want to play for the Giants in 2022.
His preference is to stay at Hawthorn despite the club’s desire to secure another high pick in this year’s draft.
Wingard and his senior manager, TLA chief Tom Petroro, has had talks with both clubs in the past 24 hours, with all parties content with the situation.
The Giants contacted Wingard about the possibility of a move after small forward Bobby Hill requested a trade to Essendon, as News Corp revealed on Monday.
But it remains likely Wingard will line up in brown and gold again next season, unless another rival club comes hard before Wednesday night’s trade deadline.
There has been no other major enquiries from clubs about Wingard in recent days with the star goalkicker committed to remain at Waverley.
Rival clubs are aware Hawthorn is keen to be aggressive in this year’s trade period as it looks to start a new chapter under Sam Mitchell.
Wingard shone for the Hawks this year in the forward half to finish fifth in the best-and-fairest.
He enjoyed a strong finish to the year, polling Brownlow Medal votes in the last four games of the season as the Hawks came home with a wet sail.
Wingard confirmed the news on his Instagram page on Monday afternoon with a post incorporating the Lupe Fiasco song “The Show Goes on”.
Wingard’s five-year deal after crossing from the Power expires at the end of 2023.
The GWS interest in Wingard came a decade after he told the Giants not to draft him, warning them he would return to South Australia at his first opportunity.
The Hawks have informed rivals they would consider paying part of players’ salary – as in the case of contracted ruckman Jon Ceglar – to help make a deal happen.
There would have to be a similar arrangement for any potential Wingard deal, if the 28-year-old green lights a move to the Harbour City.
Hawthorn wants to move up the draft order to secure Sandringham Dragons midfielder Finn Callaghan, who is being likened to GWS star Josh Kelly.
The Hawks have pick 5 in next month’s draft, while the Giants hold selection two and have been linked to Dandenong Stingrays ruckman Mac Andrew.
There is a good chance Andrew would still be available at Hawthorn’s current selection, so a pick slide could be part of any Wingard negotiations.
Hawthorn’s football director Richie Vandenberg told the Herald Sun on trade period eve the Hawks would be active, while president Jeff Kennett braced members they “may be surprised” at the club’s moves.
Wingard reacted to Kennett’s statement by posting an Instagram story of the famous scene in the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, where Leonardo DiCaprio tells his staff he’s not leaving.
He is a dual All-Australian forward who’s increasingly been used as a midfielder at the Hawks, including averaging 22 disposals, five inside 50s and seven score involvements this past season.
Wingard has played 194 AFL games since being the sixth pick in the 2011 draft and is a difference-maker at his best with his skills and speed.
Hawthorn traded Ryan Burton, picks 15 and 35 and a future fourth-round selection for Wingard and a future third-rounder three years ago.
GWS has already traded Jeremy Finlayson to Port Adelaide in recent days and could still get involved in a deal for ex-Giant Rory Lobb.
Lobb wants to return to his old side, but is contracted for two more seasons and would need to take a significant pay cut.
Fremantle is so far unwilling to pay any of Lobb’s salary.
Ex-Hawk: ‘Messy’ coach handover a factor in exit
The “messy” coaching situation at Hawthorn played a part in tall defender Tim O’Brien finding a new home at the Western Bulldogs.
O‘Brien came out of contract at the end of the season and revealed the “different messages” at the Hawks during the botched coaching handover between Alistair Clarkson and Sam Mitchell helped him start to look elsewhere.
“All the coaching stuff was sort of just coming to fruition so it was all a little bit messy, we didn’t really speak about contracts at all in the exit meeting,” he said.
“In those conversations we didn’t actually talk contracts during that time because we were still trying to work out exactly what was happening within the club.
“It was all pretty tough, everyone sort of handled it differently and it affected some more than others. Myself without a contract, it was a little bit of question marks about what does that mean to me.
“With all the different messages that were coming across it was hard to get a bit of a grasp on exactly what was happening.”
As an unrestricted agent O’Brien got the opportunity to decide his own future and quickly settled on the Bulldogs, signing a two-year deal on Thursday morning.
Given he hadn’t managed to play in a final during his 97-game career at the Hawks, linking up with this year’s grand finalists was a perfect scenario.
“It is obviously what you play footy for to play in finals and I am actually yet to play in a final,” O‘Brien said.
“My first three years at the club were obviously pretty handy years at Hawthorn so I found it hard to get in.
“Then after that there were a couple of years where we made finals but for whatever reason at that point in time I wasn‘t in the side.
“Hawthorn then didn’t make the finals so I’m yet to taste it. That was the really exciting part of joining the Western Bulldogs, they are right in that window at the minute and I’m looking forward to hopefully next year seeing what its like to play finals footy.”
During an hour-long Zoom meeting with Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge, the 27-year-old was excited to be told his role would be as an intercept-marking defender.
O’Brien certainly helped his cause in the Round 22 game against the Dogs when he took six intercept marks and won 14 intercept possessions in Hawthorn’s shock win.
“No doubt that game helped,” he said.
“Luckily for me I had Bevo as a line coach in my first two years at Hawthorn and Taylor Duryea is obviously still playing there so I was able to briefly lean on him a little bit about the Bulldogs.”
The Bulldogs have further solidified their big man department by re-signing young ruckman Jordon Sweet.
Sweet, who was picked up in the 2018 rookie draft, had a breakthrough season playing five games. He has signed until the end of 2023.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS: WILL RIVALS POUNCE ON HAWK STARS?
In 2009 Hawthorn had a list of eight “untouchables” as it attempted to broker the Shaun Burgoyne trade that would eventually help win that remarkable 2013-15 threepeat.
When news premiership hero Campbell Brown was on the table emerged the fanbase revolted and president Jeff Kennett hit the airwaves to placate them and promise it wasn’t so.
A dozen seasons on, the list of untouchables this trade period is only a handful of players at Hawthorn that includes defenders Will Day, Denver Grainger-Barrass and Changkuoth Jiath.
Hawthorn is open for business, and only the lack of cap space from rivals will ultimately decide whether stars including Tom Mitchell, Jack Gunston and Jaeger O’Meara find new homes.
Kennett, frothing at the mouth all those years ago as he suggested it was Port Adelaide which had made contact over Brown and not the Hawks, is very much on board this time around.
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His open letter to fans on Thursday night was only the latest in a long line of Hawks officials conditioning their fans to the news that might eventually come late in trade week.
We say might, because Port Adelaide seems disinterested in obvious target Mitchell, and because Richmond and Brisbane have caps so tight they seem disinclined so far to make bids for Gunston (the Lions) and O’Meara or Mitchell (Richmond).
Football boss Rob McCartney told the Herald Sun in June the club would have to contemplate moving on some senior players in a responsible fashion to stockpile picks as Essendon did last year (Archie Perkins, Nik Cox, Zac Reid) and Port Adelaide did with the Connor Rozee, Zak Butters, Xavier Duursma draft.
Then football director Richie Vandenberg made clear in Monday’s Herald Sun the club would use all levers available to improve their draft hand for this year – future picks, salary cap room, trading senior players.
As he said, the club had already had honest and mature conversations with players.
Then came Kennett’s declaration: “We may be surprised at some of the (trade/draft) decisions made but be assured they will be made after careful consideration of the club’s future needs by those we charge to make such decisions.”
The message is clear from Hawthorn – this is no fire sale but we need to get better.
And like premiership sides Richmond, Collingwood, Geelong and Melbourne before them, they need to do it through multiple early picks in the draft.
And unlike Collingwood last year, which blindsided its members with shock calls on the likes of Adam Treloar and Jaidyn Stephenson, it will communicate directly to the fanbase about the reasons for doing so.
The Hawks are almost putting a ring-fence around their brilliant young backline in Day, Grainger-Barrass and CJ at trade time but keen to field offers for the rest of their experienced forward line and midfield.
Clearly the young emerging Hawks would not be traded unless Hawthorn was made an offer it could not refuse, but the spirit of adventure and enterprise is apparent.
So there are few untouchables, but clearly those at the centre of discussions are Mitchell, O’Meara, Gunston, Jon Ceglar and Chad Wingard.
The Hawks won’t actively shop them but they are available.
Alastair Clarkson wooed Mitchell, O’Meara and Wingard on the promise of a premiership but also said like former Hawthorn stars they might have to take less to keep the list together.
So none of those stars are on anywhere near seven figures and many on less than you might think.
Luke Breust is only 31 and has kicked 441 goals across his career at a brilliant accuracy rate.
If a club out there isn’t interested in a player who has averaged 21.7 games a season and might have 60 great games left then they have rocks in their head.
Imagine Breust in St Kilda’s forward line creating havoc alongside Dan Butler and Jack Higgins.
Brisbane is already back-ending some salaries into future years given their tight cap.
But do they need Mason Cox as a key forward or Gunston, with Hawthorn potentially paying half of his salary for the next two years.
Brian Lake took a pay cut himself to go from the Western Bulldogs to Hawthorn, with the Hawks giving up 21 and 41 and getting 27 back.
It seemed to go quite well – three years, three flags, one Norm Smith Medal.
Gunston’s bad back dependant, he could be that kind of player at Brisbane as a Mr Fixit switching forward and back and helping Joe Daniher after his ordinary finals series.
Richmond doesn’t have cap space for Mitchell, but if Hawthorn paid $300,000 of his salary and secured a top-12 pick would they be able to fit him in?
Ceglar is prepared to leave and the Hawks are prepared to pay as much as $200,000 of his $350,000 salary and while he seems keen to get to Geelong, surely the Dogs make a more appealing destination to win a flag.
If Hawthorn retains all of its stars by the end of trade week it won’t be because of a lack of appetite to get busy.
It is a responsible move made with appropriate consultation from those stars using the principles garnered from the history of building premiership sides.
Now it’s just up to the rest of the competition to complete a series of win-win trades that could set up the Hawks next flag tilt.
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