AFL players need to grow up and stop using ‘go home’ factor as excuse for trade, Mick Malthouse writes
TOO often now, young players — contracted or not — decide they’ve had enough of their clubs and use the line “I want to go home” to get traded. I can’t tell you how much I detest that excuse.
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I’VE never been a fan of free agency. As we enter the second week of the trade period my unease with it grows, because there is an ugly trend starting to emerge.
Free agency and restricted free agency of course have tight guidelines, but it seems to have set in motion an unhealthy need for players to move clubs the moment they start to feel disgruntled.
Too often now, young players — contracted or not — are deciding they’ve had enough of their clubs and are using the line “I want to go home” to get traded.
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I can’t tell you how much I detest that excuse.
Of course there are extenuating circumstances sometimes for a player needing to move closer to family and support, but most of the time there are not.
When a young man nominates for the draft, he nominates to be picked up by one of 18 clubs.
He doesn’t choose which club he goes to, the club chooses him.
He is lucky to go to any club, to live out his dream of playing in the AFL.
There is limited career time in football and players should make the most of it.
Every player wants to taste success at his club and they all have to earn a living — I understand that — but football is also about growing up. It’s about resilience.
There’s no “going home” for players from Tasmania, the Northern Territory or the ACT, where there are no AFL clubs.
Are players from those places more mature and resilient to be able to live away from their families for the sake of their careers?
It just cuts no ice with me.
In the US, most people leave home to attend college, so moving states to play professional sport isn’t a big issue. It’s similar in the UK.
AFL clubs aren’t lily white either. I know that. Loyalty is convenient for footballers and clubs. But we must get over the “I want to go home” syndrome quick smart, especially with free agency hanging over everyone’s heads.
It is such a quandary for clubs knowing they have a player entering the free agency zone.
They want to sign him before the circus starts, but managers and players like to wait to weigh up the options of greater potential success and possibly financial gain.
Having been there, I can tell you that waiting only causes distraction.
The media will hound the player and club for an answer until they get one.
Games of football become the side issue. It is a heavy burden to carry.
I really dislike the NRL trading system, but I’m starting to wonder if having a player sign on to another club before or during a season — allowing him to play out the year without distractions at his current club — is actually a better way of avoiding the outside influences of contract negotiations.
Rory Sloane comes out of contract at the end of next year as a free agent and will be courted by many clubs.
Adelaide, through its captain Taylor Walker, has made it clear what it thinks about players leaving the club.
Sloane is a talented player and he is already at a top club.
It’s hard to see him wanting to leave for more success, so presumably it would only be for a bigger contract. The Crows must do everything they can to keep him.
Gold Coast co-captain Tom Lynch is in the same boat. He is one of the best players in the competition. A huge talent.
New Suns coach Stuart Dew has a big enough job ahead of him, but success through playing finals next season is perhaps the only thing I can see that will keep Lynch there.
Gold Coast has to try everything in its power to keep him.
Restricted free agent Steve Motlop, on the other hand, had to leave Geelong.
Under pressure from the coach and match committee, they’ve shown little faith in him this season so he was wise to look for opportunities elsewhere.
Adelaide’s Charlie Cameron should think long and hard about his request to return home.
The Crows took Cameron on as a rookie, trained him up and played him in the Grand Final.
Unless there are private circumstances surrounding his need to get back to Brisbane, then he should be made to realise what he would be giving up.
Adelaide has lost too many players for big money — Kurt Tippett being one — so I am glad it played hardball with Jake Lever and Melbourne.
Lever wanted to get home, but it’s a long drive from Romsey, where he is from, to Melbourne’s headquarters for training each day.
As soon as he declared he wanted to go back to Victoria, it opened the door to all 10 clubs — not just Melbourne — so the Crows were well within their rights to demand two first-round draft picks for him.
Josh Schache and the Brisbane Lions are a similar story. Schache wants to come home, but the Lions need to hold out for the right offer on this one.
It is too easy for these clubs to lose young talent to bigger clubs.
There is always danger in making declarations.
When the Western Bulldogs announced Jake Stringer was on the trade table and Melbourne declared Jack Watts available for trade, they immediately reduced their player’s worth.
They are both contracted but not wanted, so the damage is done.
Stringer is worth a first-round draft pick. But the Bulldogs will have to accept the best offer, whatever it is, to unload him, as is their preference.
Melbourne has decided, in its quest for finals success, that Watts doesn’t play a role, so it, too, now has to move him on for the best price it can get.
I wouldn’t be moving either of them out, as I see high football value in both.
Bryce Gibbs is still contracted to Carlton. Last year the Blues were keen to move him on for two first-round picks.
Perhaps — if they are working from the ground up — they should take a quality first-round pick for him now, because in two years he could leave for nothing as a free agent.
It all sounds so fickle. But this is people’s lives up in the air and a football club’s success on the line.
Trade period is one giant headache from which you can’t escape from football.
Like it or not, it’s all part of the game.
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