Inside story of the deal that sent Dayne Beams to Brisbane and landed Jack Crisp and Jordan De Goey at Collingwood
He was dubbed the ‘steak knives’ in the Dayne Beams trade, but Jack Crisp is one of Collingwood’s best bargain recruits. Here’s how the deal went down on a chaotic Caulfield Guineas Day.
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Collingwood’s general manager of list management Derek Hine was deep in discussion on his phone in the backstreets of Richmond on Caulfield Guineas Day 2014.
His thoughts weren’t on the races.
He was working through a complex trade and had a limited time frame to get it done.
Hine had been attending a lunch at the nearby Bouzy Rouge restaurant and bar, but had to excuse himself for almost an hour as he worked through trying to get the deal across the line.
Collingwood’s Dayne Beams was determined to be traded to Brisbane for family reasons. While the Magpies were reluctant to let him go, Hine knew he had to make the best of a bad situation.
Besides, he had a plan.
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He wanted two high draft picks in return for Beams and already figured the first of them – pick 5 – could be used on an explosive young midfielder from the Oakleigh Chargers.
His name: Jordan De Goey.
“The whole Beams thing came up and we were trying to get (picks) 5 and 18 and I was dealing with ‘Swanny’ (Brisbane chief executive Greg Swann),” Hine recalled this week.
“We were running out of time to facilitate it. But (pick) 18 was (quickly) off the table for some reason …”
A circuit breaker was required.
Hine then asked for picks 5 and 25 and sensed an opportunity that had been a few years in the making.
The circuit breaker was 18-game Brisbane player Jack Crisp, who Hine had interviewed in the lead-up to the 2011 draft when he was a kid from Myrtleford. He had tracked Crisp since he had been rookie-listed by the Lions in 2012.
So Hine hit the phones – with Swann, who was working from his home in Brisbane, and with Crisp’s manager Anthony McConville, who was at the races to see the horse he had a small share in – the Mark Kavanagh-trained Chivalry – compete in the Group 1 Caulfield Guineas.
“Swanny was up in Brisbane, Jack’s manager at the races and I was at a lunch at the Bouzy Rouge,” Hine said.
“I ended up being in the side street next to the Bouzy Rouge for probably 45 minutes.
“I rang Anthony (McConville) and he was at the races. I said to him: ‘Look mate, we can do this now’, and he rang Jack straight away.
“I rang Swanny back and said ‘We can do this … It is pick 5, pick 25 and Jack Crisp … plus a dinner for two at the Bouzy Rouge’.
“I said to him: ‘Mate, I need you to text that (offer) through to me now. If you send that text to me in the next half-hour, we are done’.”
The confirmation text came moments later, with the Lions also getting pick 65 back the other way.
The Magpies on-traded pick 25 to North Melbourne for Levi Greenwood and, as planned, used its newly minted pick 5 to take De Goey.
Fast forward almost eight years, and that circuit breaker – the running machine that is Jack Crisp – will play his 200th AFL game in Saturday’s preliminary final against Sydney at the SCG.
He is the Magpies’ reigning Copeland Trophy winner and could become a multiple winner next month.
Highlighting what a bargain Collingwood got when it secured Crisp is the fact that he hasn’t missed a senior AFL game since he started at the club.
He has played all of Collingwood’s 181 matches since the start of 2015.
If you add the last six he played for the Lions in 2014, he has played 187 consecutive games, which is ninth on the all-time VFL-AFL record list – 57 fewer than Jim Stynes’ extraordinary tally of 244 in a row.
Swann recounted that chaotic Saturday afternoon, saying: “There were a few calls … What had happened was that (Anthony) McConville had said before the trade period that if Jack could get home to Melbourne, he would go, but he wasn’t killing himself to leave.”
“Nothing really came of that.
“He was definitely thrown in at the end (by Collingwood) … it was literally like, ‘Can you throw him in’, and we thought he wanted to go, and ‘Leppa’ (then Lions coach Justin Leppitsch) was happy for him to go.”
Leppitsch was the Lions coach at the time; now he is working with Crisp at Collingwood.
“The club (Brisbane) was hell bent on getting Dayne (Beams) and I think we had blinkers on to some extent when it came to that,” Leppitsch recounted.
“We didn’t want to lose Jack. I think he was keen to be closer to Melbourne and his name was thrown up as part of the Beams trade.
“When he became part of the deal late in the trade period, the club felt it was a good deal.”
Given how late Crisp was added to the Beams trade deal, he received the unflattering and unwanted tag of “steak knives”, which McConville always felt was disrespectful.
The Magpie midfielder-defender himself has always hated it.
“He has paid them (Collingwood) back in spades.” McConville said. “It has been a bloody good story.
“That ‘steak knives’ tag wasn’t great at the time – and it wasn’t right either.”
“He had played the last six games (for Brisbane) that year and he averaged a goal a game and around 20 possessions in those games.
“Brisbane was only keen to do a one-year deal (for him) and that didn’t satisfy me at the time. He had come off the rookie list and, to be honest, the Lions thought he would just roll over on a one-year deal.
“But I had much grander plans than that.”
McConville, who runs Macs Sports Promotions, won’t forget that Caulfield Guineas day for two reasons.
Chivalry ran fifth in the Guineas and, better still, he found the right long-term home for his client Crisp.
Crisp had already been jilted by “one big Melbourne-based club” who had shown strong interest, only to withdraw their commitment before the 2014 trade period.
“We had been speaking to another club and don’t worry I will let them remain nameless,” McConville said with a laugh.
“A big Melbourne-based club was keen and all of a sudden they did a backflip and I was pretty disappointed with that. They just ran out of numbers.”
Enter Collingwood.
McConville added: “There had been some conversations post-season (with Collingwood), but without guarantees, only general interest.“
“I was at the races at Caulfield (that day) and ‘Dekka’ (Hines) rang me up and he could hear all the background noise. He said: ‘Are you on the punt?’ I said: ‘Mate, I’ve got a horse running’ and he said “We are keen on Jack Crisp’.
“I told him we could have him there (at Collingwood) the next day.”
Hine had interviewed Crisp in 2011 in his draft year. By chance, he had played footy for a season at Myrtleford a generation earlier with Crisp’s father Matt.
Even though the Magpies overlooked the teenager in the 2011 draft, and had been beaten to him in the rookie draft by the Lions, Hine felt as if he could make a player if he could clean up a few aspects of his game.
“We really liked him, but we didn’t have the chance to bring him in,” Hine said.
“He had a bit of a deficiency with his kicking, but his ability to run and transition was off the charts. I watched him in a game at the MCG against us late in the (2014) season. He was starting to get through the lines and we knew he was out of contract.”
After Swann’s text message to Hine confirming the details of the trade – agreed to on Caulfield Guineas day, but officially signed off a few days later – McConville called Crisp, who was busily preparing for his 21st birthday party that night at the Myrtleford Football Club.
“I rang Jack straight away and said: ‘Get your a **** down to Melbourne (tomorrow) … we are going to Collingwood,” McConville said.
“He had his 21st that night.
“We went into the club on Sunday and the big Yank (Mason Cox) was in the gym. He had just arrived. Jack said to me: “I want to play for the Pies … the whole family barracks for Collingwood and I barrack for Collingwood’.
“I remember saying to him, ‘You are walking into this club not to just be a young kid … you are going to be playing first 18 and that’s got to be your mindset.”
Beams went on to win a best-and-fairest with Brisbane in 2015, to add to his 2012 Collingwood best-and-fairest.
Crisp won last year’s Copeland and might yet prove to be a back to back winner in 2022.
De Goey and Crisp were the leading vote getters in last week’s semi-final win over Fremantle in the AFL Coaches Association Best Finals Player award.
Leppitsch believes Crisp is making a case for being the best player of that trade transaction.
“(Brisbane) gave (Collingwood) their first two picks and Jack, and it ended up being Jordan De Goey (as pick 5) and Jack to Collingwood,” Leppitsch said.
“History always tells the story whether you did a good deal or not, but Jack was definitely the underrated player in that deal.
“He might not have been the most talented player (of that trade), but when you think about what you get from him and how his career has developed, there is an argument to suggest that he could be the best player in that trade.”
Hine said he knew Crisp – now 28 – could become an important player for the Magpies if given the chance, but never figured he would end up becoming one of the club’s best players.
In the years since, he has transformed from hard-running halfback into a serious midfield force.
“One thing about Jack, and this was borne out in his (2011) interview, he was always a really driven, no fuss kind of person,” Hine said.
“He has been unbelievably professional in the way he comes in and gets stuff done. You wouldn’t know he is here.
“He has had great support from (wife) Mikayla; they are such a great couple and such a great family. You wouldn’t have a worry if you had 44 Jack Crisps.”
So whatever happened to the dinner for two at the Bouzy Rouge?
“I never followed through on it,” Hine joked about the cheeky little exclamation mark on the trade that the Pies clearly won.
Swann can’t remember that Bouzy Rouge dinner being part of the trade negotiations, but said: “Beams was good for us for a bit … he won a best-and-fairest ..”
In the swings and roundabouts of trade, he also knows that Beams’ trade return to Collingwood at the end of 2018 season saw the Lions receive two first-round picks from the Magpies – a costly move for Collingwood.
Beams played only nine more games with Collingwood in his second stint at the club before retiring from the game for personal reasons.
McConville added: “I wasn’t cut in on that (Bouzy Rouge lunch) deal … what I got was a three-year contract (for Crisp) and he has done the rest.”
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