Dale Thomas can’t be blamed for accepting Carlton’s $3.5 million offer, writes Jon Ralph

DALE Thomas isn’t to blame for the deal that will handicap Carlton’s list management strategy until 2018, writes JON RALPH.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 11: Callum Sinclair of the Swans and Dale Thomas of the Blues bump each other during the NAB Challenge AFL match between the Carlton Blues and the Sydney Swans at Etihad Stadium on March 11, 2016 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

DALE Thomas isn’t to blame for the deal that will handicap Carlton’s list management strategy until 2018.

If someone offered you $3.5 million to play football after two ankle surgeries in the previous 10 months, what would you do?

Especially when one surgeon had just told you that same ankle would need a complete reconstruction, keeping you out another year.

Thomas’s determination to jump at Carlton’s four-year offer — with a fifth-year clause — was a no-brainer.

Yet only two years into a deal set to run another three seasons, it is apparent Carlton has been lumped with the modern equivalent of the Mark Mercuri deal.

David King wondered if Thomas’s kicking was AFL standard this week, while Kevin Bartlett pondered if he was in Carlton’s best 22.

Yet a question just as valid was why Carlton were prepared to offer Thomas, 28, such a monster deal when rivals were never going to come close to matching it.

Carlton’s free agency deal for Thomas — at least $700,000 a year, maybe as much as $750,000 — was clearly designed to blow Collingwood out of the water.

Carlton wanted to hand him a deal the Pies would never match under Thomas’s restricted free agency provisions.

And yet a handful of phone calls to the right sources would have unearthed the reality — that the Pies couldn’t wait to move Thomas on.

Dale Thomas during the Blues’ NAB Challenge clash against Sydney. Picture: Getty Images

It is understood he was offered a three-year deal at Collingwood worth $450,000-$460,000 a season with various triggers for playing games.

In other words, $1.35m in cash compared with $3.5m from the Blues.

The Pies knew his ankle was dodgy, they had already made the decision to turn over the 2012 premiership list and they didn’t love the constant reports of Daisy on the social circuit.

Collingwood has privately wondered at times why Carlton’s deal remained so high when Thomas’s future was so uncertain.

We learnt last year the Blues were aware for the whole of 2013 that Eddie Betts would leave for Adelaide, so had they offered Thomas those terms many months before he arrived?

Even a $700,000-a-year deal for three years would have got him to Carlton, yet given it flexibility to cut his wage by the end of this year.

If someone offered you $3.5 million to play football after two ankle surgeries in the previous 10 months, what would you do?

The story would be stunningly one-sided if Collingwood had used that No.11 compensation draft pick to recruit a megastar, but AFL trading is never that simple.

It used that pick to trade for Sydney’s Jesse White, giving up 11, 31 and 49 to get back pick six (Matt Scharenberg), then used its first-round pick on Nathan Freeman.

Scharenberg is out with another knee reconstruction, his tally of AFL games matching his four surgeries at the club so far.

Freeman left for St Kilda with his own hamstring issues and was effectively traded for Brisbane’s James Aish.

What is certain is the decision to let Thomas go saved the salary cap space to recruit Greater Western Sydney star Adam Treloar.

Thomas was always going to battle after his ankle injuries in 2014 and was dead stiff to last 40 seconds in the first game of 2015, when his shoulder popped.

He would go on to contribute only 70 possessions for the year in five games.

Now he will sit out Round 1, suspended after elbowing Jeremy Laidler in the jaw, perhaps because of frustration at Friday’s poor showing.

Rock-bottom may have come Friday night, when he nearly missed his foot with a handful of drop punts.

The only way is up for Carlton’s $3 million man.

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