The decade of silence between Crows and Power at trade talks could be finally broken by Hamish Hartlett

HAMISH Hartlett was in love with Port Adelaide 11 months ago. Now he is facing the possibility of being traded and having to leave his home state. Unless the Crows step in ...

Hamish Hartlett at his home after signing a five-year contract extension with Port Adelaide. Picture: Sarah Reed.

HAMISH Hartlett was in love with Port Adelaide 11 months ago. He said such on Twitter as the ink was drying on the paper detailing his five-year contract extension.

Hartlett also was (and still is) in his comfort zone of being at home in Adelaide and surrounded by his family. Less than a year later, Hartlett’s way to keep all this — should he accept becoming the Power’s major play in next month’s AFL trade market — is to create the first grand defection between SA’s vastly competitive (even bitter) AFL rivals.

Question is, does Adelaide want to engage in a deal that would end almost a decade of silence between the Crows and Power during the official AFL trade period each October?

Port Adelaide and the Crows last waved away a player to the rival — a move that is seen to be the Cold War equivalent of the old Soviets and American exchanging spies across a bridge in Potsdam, Germany — in 2007. Brad Symes left the Power after 20 AFL games in three seasons to play another 60 in five years at Adelaide before being forced to put life before football after a series of concussions.

The only other Port Adelaide-Crows trades in 20 years of the on-field rivalry (that has played out for longer off the park) have been Matthew Bode in 2000 (for the No. 12 draft pick that was cashed in for Shaun Burgoyne); Ian Downsborough for Brett Chalmers in 1997 and two pre-draft picks (assigned to Aaron Keating and Tim Cook) for Scott Hodges, also in the Power’s start-up draft in 1997.

Matthew Bode in 2002.

No grand defection. Hodges and Chalmers were returning to their home club at Alberton. Symes and Bode found greater opportunity at Adelaide. The Power certainly won in 2000 — scoring Burgoyne (at 12) and Kane Cornes (at 20) after Adelaide used pick No. 7 to recruit the infamous Lawrence Angwin.

And this memory may well explain why Port Adelaide and the Crows have done very little business at trade talks this century.

Adelaide’s first draft pick this year will be around 14-18, perhaps not early enough to satisfy Port Adelaide.

Adelaide is well stocked in half-backs who can work in the midfield, particularly after the Crows moved in last year’s trade period to claim Anzac Medallist Paul Seedsman from Collingwood and the so-far unsighted Curtly Hampton from Greater Western Sydney.

At a time when Ricky Henderson could take up free agency noting how crowded this corner of the Adelaide line-up has become, it is difficult to imagine Crows list-management chairman Mark Ricciuto running an agenda that targets Hartlett … unless there is that other agenda.

If Hartlett were to fulfil the promise of his talent by finding consistency at Adelaide — and have Crows fitness coach Brett Burton deliver durability to Hartlett’s body — there would be a dagger in the battle to settle which SA-based club runs the best football program.

Hartlett in the next fortnight will learn where his potential options are unfolding across the national competition. He will take delight in the personal messages from some of the AFL’s star players saying they would welcome him on their club’s half-back line.

And that five-year contract extension signed in October — with the Twitter announcement of wanting “ultimate success” at Port Adelaide — allows him to stay at Alberton. The wait for a grand defection in SA football will go on …

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Originally published as The decade of silence between Crows and Power at trade talks could be finally broken by Hamish Hartlett