Rucci: Free agency auction for Patrick Dangerfield will be the biggest bidding war in AFL history
WHEN Crows midfielder Patrick Dangerfield becomes a free agent in 13 months, expect a bidding war that will redefine the AFL.
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LOT 32 today is:
A 24-year-old midfielder with less than 200 AFL games on the clock. He is twice an All-Australian. He has ranked in the top-three of his club championship in the past three years — and in industry ratings for the AFL’s best players. He is a top-10 draftee.
In professional sport, this is the “blue-chip franchise player” — a talent around whom a premiership can be planned and a marketing strategy can be based. Future captain, some would say.
Now, who will start the bidding for Patrick Dangerfield?
Do we hear $1 million a year? Is that $1.1 million from Geelong? Did you raise your hand from Hawthorn, Mr Clarkson?
Prepare for the greatest auction in AFL history.
Patrick Dangerfield is a free agent in 13 months. He also is managed by Paul Connors, the very shrewd Paul Connors. Together, they will redefine Australian football.
Today, there is a sense of panic and unease after Dangerfield on Tuesday — in a radio interview with FIVEaa from the AFL Players Association awards in Melbourne — declared he was in no rush to deal with his expiring contract at the Adelaide Football Club.
Why would he be?
Dangerfield has before him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It is not without risk considering his — and Connors’ — strategy could easily tumble on a career-ending injury in the next 12 months.
But all black cat curses aside, Dangerfield today can enjoy his holiday break at his family base at Mogg’s Creek in provincial Victoria knowing his manager, Connors, is about to field the biggest financial deal he will ever know.
The Adelaide Football Club has never paid a player $1 million or more in a season. The record remains the $900,000 foolishly offered to Kurt Tippett in that ill-fated deal struck in 2009.
The Adelaide Football Club is not known as a “big payer”.
The Crows have worked — and lost out in the Jack Gunston case — to a rigid pay scale based on the number of games played by a squad member.
Dangerfield changes the ground rules at West Lakes.
Rory Sloane may have fallen in love with Adelaide — after sobbing his eyes out after being drafted to the Crows from Upwey, Victoria in 2008. Taylor Walker may not want to know of any other AFL club after growing up in Broken Hill totally besotted by the Crows.
But Patrick Dangerfield is one of the most pragmatic modern footballers who is not easily distracted by the old-world notions that today’s players should still hold loyalty in their kit bags. Seemingly lost in the Dangerfield interview with inaugural Crows coach Graham Cornes and former Adelaide player Stephen Rowe is how Dangerfield noted no one holds loyalty as a standard against AFL clubs.
At West Lakes, the lesson from watching club favourite Bernie Vince eagerly traded to Melbourne last year — to score a second-round draft pick missing from Adelaide’s arsenal on the back of the Tippett sanctions — still echoes.
If the Crows — and any AFL club — can shop around a player in next month’s trade market, why can’t Dangerfield — and his manager Connors — do the same?
Dangerfield in the next 13 months will highlight how the collective bargaining agreement between the AFL executive (representing the clubs) and the players’ union has swung to the players’ advantage.
After eight years’ service, a player — and it would have to be a valued player — can set up an auction to achieve a contract that meets his grandest dreams.
Consider how Melbourne key defender James Frawley may command $800,000 next season in a free-agent move to Geelong ... but a far more capable defender, Daniel Talia at Adelaide, will not. Talia has to wait another three years before he and his manager Liam Pickering can put the squeeze on the Crows as a free agent.
It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And while the free-agent player collects significant coin, the clubs that lose free agents have to wait for the AFL to assign draft picks as compensation and start all over again in developing a potential “franchise” player.
If Adelaide genuinely feared Dangerfield could walk next year, the Crows next month should be able to start their own auction in the trade market — and move Dangerfield if a super deal emerges. Currently that is not possible as Dangerfield can block any trade.
Free agency has significantly swung the game in favour of the players, the star players who can command million-dollar auctions.
Last time, Dangerfield extended his contract in the second month of the 2012 season — although Connor had calmed the speculation in March by assuring all “there is no reason to worry with Patrick”.
This time, Dangerfield may have to carry the pain of speculation on his intentions — as highlighted after Tuesday’s radio interview — through all of next season that is so critical to defining the Crows. But then, with more than $1 million a year to be made from that pain, it is probably worth the hassle.
Welcome to the era of free agents having leverage.
DANGER SIGN?
“I HAVEN’T decided yet.
“I still have 12 months to run, over 12 months to run on my contract. So it is not something ... while I get asked basically every time I do some sort of media, it is not something I’ve thought about and that is the honest truth.
“I’ve focused on playing footy this year and now that the footy is finished I just want to get away from it.
“While there will be speculation now - players nowadays have to be prepared for that, I certainly am - I am in no rush (to re-sign) that’s for sure.”
CROWS midfielder PATRICK DANGERFIELD - who is a free agent next year and a key target in Geelong’s plans - after being challenged on Radio FIVEaa to follow team-mates Rory Sloane and Taylor Walker in declaring their loyalty to Adelaide.
Originally published as Rucci: Free agency auction for Patrick Dangerfield will be the biggest bidding war in AFL history
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