AFL trade 2024: Mark Duffield reviews the trade period for both the Eagles and Dockers

It took until the last few minutes for the Eagles to dig themselves out of their Tom Barrass hole, now they’ve got a fair lead on their rivals Fremantle as the battle for Chad Warner heats up.

It took until the last few minutes of the AFL’s trade period for West Coast to dig themselves out of a hole – by executing the trade that had put them in the hole in the first place.

Defender Tom Barrass will be a Hawk in 2025 and the picks traded – Hawthorn’s future first, second and third round picks with West Coast’s fourth round going back to Hawthorn meant the Eagles were able to claw back ground lost when Hawthorn walked away from the Barrass deal on Friday a week ago.

The downside of the deal is that 2024 is considered a stronger draft and the Eagles will not be able to bring in top end young talent off the back of their trades for 12 months.

The upside of the deal is that if there is a battle for Chad Warner next season between the two WA clubs then the Eagles will start – from a draft capital perspective at least – with a fair head start over cross town rival Fremantle.

West Coast’s starting position on Barrass had been that they wanted two first round picks. They came up short of that but this was, nonetheless, a strong end to a trade period that had been laced with hiccups and problems.

Tom Barrass eventually made his way to the Hawks. Picture: Daniel Carson/AFL Photos via Getty Images

They had been able to bring in their primary targets – Richmond free agent Jack Graham and Tiger Liam Baker – and give themselves a handy draft turbo charge for 2025.

It does not mean there won’t be some significant challenges in the short term. The Eagles have lost a superb intercept defender in Barrass. His partner in defence Jeremy McGovern is 32, so is forward Jamie Cripps. Elliot Yeo has just turned 31 and Tim Kelly is 30.

But adding Baker and Graham bolsters the club’s 23 to 27 year old stocks and will provide support for both older and younger members of the squad.

The Eagles also traded out Jack Darling at 32 to North Melbourne but he was, by season’s end, on the fringes of the club’s best team.

The Eagles had to do a significant amount of trade manoeuvring after Hawthorn walked away from the Barrass trade negotiation before the Eagles were able to secure pick 14 in this year’s draft – the pick they were promising to send to Richmond for Baker.

In the end – that was the pick that got the Baker deal done but only after Carlton, who had grabbed the pick off the Hawks, traded it back to the Eagles along with pick 12 in exchange for coveted pick three in a strong draft.

The decision to slide from pick three to 12 and 14 to land Baker caused uproar among West Coast’s fans who threatened to cancel memberships. Baker, who is backing himself to prove them wrong, wasn’t bothered about that when asked about it on Wednesday.

“I’ve heard,” he said on SEN. “Oh well…….”

“It was a bit like welcome to West Coast this is what you are in for.”

“It was part of why I liked them so much growing up because of how well supported they were. I came into the league with a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I wanted to prove a few people wrong and right and it seems like it is a bit like that now.”

Liam Baker is an Eagle. Pic: Michael Klein

Baker said the Eagles represented a fresh challenge after winning two flags with Richmond.

“It is my job now to hold up my end of the bargain which is to play good footy over the next few years.”

“I was thinking about what I wanted out of the last bit of my career and to go to a team that are finding their feet now and they have a lot of work to do and I just want to be a part of that, seeing where we can get to. I like getting challenged and I feel like I need another one (challenge),” he said.

“It is just up to me and the club now to see where we can go.”

The appointment of Andrew McQualter had sealed his want to join the Eagles, he said.

“I have pretty much said to him when he was going for the job from day dot – if you get the job I am coming there with you. I have got a lot of respect for Mini and I feel like he can do a very good job at the Eagles. It was a big, big bonus that he got announced just as I made

FREMANTLE REVIEW: ‘EXACTLY THE PLAYER’ THEY NEED IN BOLTON

Fremantle had one key objective this trade period – to bring in Shai Bolton – and they had three first-round draft picks to get it done.

The Dockers wanted to use the first and third of those picks, but got stuck in a trade impasse with Richmond for much of this trade period.

In the end, they used all three and got one back that was an improvement on the third.

They would have been happy to use all three of their original picks – 10, 11 and 18 to get Bolton and Liam Baker but it became that Baker’s strong preference was to join West Coast.

Bolton has played 135 games and kicked 165 goals for the Tigers since a 2017 debut. He is a dual premiership player, a one time all-Australian and has finished top five in Richmond’s best and fairest in each of the last five seasons.

He was “exactly the player” the Dockers needed according to list manager David Walls, wanted to return to WA but had, pre-trade period, expressed no preference over which club he would come to, while Richmond had the comfort of a four-year contract in their possession, knowing that would give them tight control over his trade value.

The two worst case scenarios for the Dockers were that Richmond would tell Bolton he could stay another year, or that West Coast would somehow cobble together a deal that would steal Bolton out from under Fremantle’s nose.

Shai Bolton is a Docker. Picture: Josh Chadwick/Getty Images

Richmond keeping Bolton shaped as a real possibility. He is 25 and he is likely to be worth almost as much in draft capital next year as he was this year.

And believe it or not the threat of West Coast competing for Bolton remained real right up until the Dockers and Tigers reached agreement on a deal.

The threat seemed much more likely next year than this year but it is understood West Coast were very nearly able to rejoin the battle for Bolton late on Tuesday night as Fremantle battled to break their impasse with the Tigers while West Coast strove to reclaim some lost ground from the public reaction to their pick slide from three to 12 to close the Liam Baker deal.

The Eagles were coming from a long way back given that they had to perform a serious set of trade gymnastics to reorganise their draft capital to get Baker and were still scrambling to restart talks with Hawthorn over Tom Barrass after the Hawks had sensationally quit the trade negotiation last Friday leaving the Eagles temporarily without pick 14 to hand on to get the trade done for Baker.

But once the Eagles had split pick three and regained pick 14 and pick 12 – they were able to bring Baker in and consider making a late run at Bolton, using pick 12 and future picks they were expecting to get for Barrass.

The Dockers, who had stuck to their guns that they would offer picks 10 and 18 and nothing more, had to find a way to find more. In the end they gave Richmond what they wanted (picks 10 and 11), but got something back.

And the irony was that the pick 14 that had caused the original issue for the Eagles was the pick that came back which will keep the Dockers in the first round of the draft. The future third round pick that came with it was the set of steak knives on the deal for Fremantle.

It was more than the Dockers had set out to pay but a deal like the Bolton deal will be measured on what he brings – not what was paid for him. If the Dockers become genuine flag contenders over the next five years and Bolton becomes one of their best six players in the push for a flag, the price will have been worth it.

When their 2024 season faltered – the lack of an X factor player who could turn half chances into scores at critical times in games cost the Dockers in close matches against Essendon, Geelong, GWS and Port Adelaide in the last month of the season.

And X factor is one of the terms Walls used to describe Bolton.

“His ball use, creativity, speed and ability to break lines makes him such a dangerous player,” he said. “He just has flair and X-factor that will give teammates an immediate lift.”