Eddie McGuire is ready for AFL players to declare intention to leave their club in-season
IS the AFL ready for players to announce their intentions to leave a club mid-season? Players and club president have their say as player movement grows.
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COLLINGWOOD president Eddie McGuire believes AFL players should declare their intentions to leave their current club as early as possible, even if it’s during the season.
NRL star Cooper Cronk’s announcement on Tuesday that he’s leaving Melbourne Storm after 15 years at the end of the year came just over a month into the new season.
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McGuire has always believed announcements about a player’s future should wait until the end of the season but says the professionalism with which the Cronk situations was handled by both club and player has changed his mind.
“I’ve always been firmly in the AFL camp — I don’t want to know, I want everybody committed to the cause,” McGuire said.
“I haven’t ever (supported NRL model) until probably this moment, today.
“If you’ve got people like Cooper Cronk of integrity … if they’re professionals, get out and play your game of footy.”
The Magpies president used former Collingwood midfielder Dayne Beams as an example.
Beams requested a trade out of the Magpies at the end of 2014 to head home to Queensland and more specifically, to Brisbane to be closer to his family and ill father.
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Beams revealed in the aftermath of the trade it was something he had been thinking about for some time and McGuire said if the club has known earlier, it would have given it time to chase a midfielder from another club.
“If you had known six months earlier you would have been into getting a player that you needed to fill that role,” McGuire said on Triple M.
Collingwood star Adam Treloar has a different view, declaring he doesn’t believe the AFL will ever be ready for players to declare in-season they’re leaving their club to accept a deal at a rival.
Treloar, who moved from GWS to the Magpies at the end of 2015, believes trust between the player, his teammates and coaches could be breached.
“I don’t think we’re ready for it, I don’t think our sport will ever be ready for it,” he said on SEN.
“I know the NRL has been doing it for a while and it clearly works for them but you speak about the coaches and the trust within the group, I think that would be the biggest thing affected, knowing whether the guy is really invested into the group and having him out there playing for the team when you know he’s not going to be there (the next year).
“I reckon that would be the hardest thing.
“I don’t think I’d be a fan of it in the AFL but it clearly works for the NRL.”
Three-time Hawthorn premiership player Isaac Smith also doesn’t like the idea.
“I love the loyalty factor of AFL footy and I don’t know if I want to see blokes and teammates coming out that early in the year saying they’re leaving,” Smith said on RSN 927.
“I don’t know if it’s great for the game but in saying that if I did have a teammate leaving I wouldn’t be hating him for it. You know that there is certain decisions why people leave.
“I sort of like that it’s all left mostly to the end of the year in the AFL.”
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