The Gold Coast Suns entered this year’s trade period as a bunch of losers that hadn’t put up a fight since Campbell Brown broke Steven May’s jaw in the carpark of the Bootsy Bellows nightclub in West Hollywood.
If anything, the Gold Coast Suns are blessed expansion-team comic relief against the looming squall blowing in from western Sydney. When the Suns’ Tony Cochrane – the only AFL club chairman to have won a Tony Award – took on Hawthorn, his bluster sounded like it might have been fished out of an off-Broadway skip and run through a focus group. Although, if nothing else, trade week is theatre for those in the cheap seats.
“If [Hawthorn] was to walk away here, this would be a disgraceful way to treat Jaeger O’Meara,” Cochrane told AFL Trade Radio. “They’ve promised this bloke the world and they’re going to hand him an atlas.” He also said that the Hawks had “picked an appalling year to challenge us”.
It bears repeating that on Tuesday, Cochrane was in the minutes as rejecting picks 10 and 48 from Hawthorn, stressing the club would not back down on its hardline stance on the 22-year-old’s future. After all, they already had a surfeit of first-round picks which they viewed as insurance for sending O’Meara to the pre-season draft.
But with 10 minutes to go to the trade deadline on Thursday, Cochrane, after accusing Hawthorn of having talked a big game, blinked. And blinked hard, losing O’Meara for pick 10 and two future second-round picks. Cochrane’s hardline stance was tough up to a point, that point being a 2017 second-round pick.
That the Suns have lost O’Meara and Dion Prestia (to Richmond) for picks and not players, reaffirms the message that the Suns are an easy mark at the trade table. Hawthorn, on the other hand, has played this beautifully. Despite the social media schadenfreude, it has effectively lost a year of Sam Mitchell and Jordan Lewis for at least six from ex-Swan Tom Mitchell and O’Meara. If the Hawks get the latter right, they may make their club doctor eligible for votes on Best & Fairest night. They have also, to borrow a phrase made popular in the US, dumped salary to help chase a big-name free agent in 2017.
The O’Meara trade was completed largely thanks to the involvement of Carlton. The three-way deal saw the Blues get picks 48, 66 and 70, but it was far from the most significant move the club made on Thursday – not so much for what they did, more for what they didn’t do with the wantaway Bryce Gibbs.
Unlike the Suns’ chairman, Carlton’s general manager of list management and strategy, Stephen Silvagni, is not one for blinking. Carlton was insistent that two first-round picks was what would be required for Gibbs to go home to Adelaide. Silvagni’s Adelaide counterpart, Justin Reid said that he believed the club’s offer to Carlton was a fair and reasonable one.
“Going into the trade period, we had a strategy of going into the draft. At the 11th minute [sic], we had Bryce and his management approach us,” Reid said. “It would’ve been irresponsible if we didn’t actually try to engage and look at that strongly.”
What was perhaps irresponsible was Adelaide actively trying to arrange a trade by dumping news of their intentions to a ravenous football media like burley to sharks. An approach that didn’t endear the club to Carlton.
“We were very honest with Adelaide from day one and what it would take,” said Carlton’s head of football and Silvagni’s premiership team-mate, Andrew McKay. “We’re looking forward to Bryce pulling on the navy blue jumper again next year. The thing to remember here is that Bryce loves the Carlton football club.”
Love may be stretching the definition, as the marriage with Gibbs would appear to be shaky to say the least. But perhaps Roseanne Barr summed it up best when she said: “Take this marriage thing seriously – it has to last all the way to the divorce.”
It was only a little more than two years ago that Gibbs signed a five-year, $3 million deal to tie him to the club until the end of 2019. All Carlton has done is hold him to a contract that was always going to be an expensive marriage to break. If players are happy to take the security of a five-year deal they have to accept that they… well, they may have to fulfil it. It is an example that has lacked for company throughout not just this, but many trade periods.
“It’s disappointing but he’ll pull on a Carlton jumper next year,” said Gibb’s manager and architect of his five-year contract, Nigel Carmody, wearing a frown like a faded tattoo.
The upside for Carlton fans is that maybe Gibbs plays out his contract angry. Although, with Adelaide trading out midfielder Jarryd Lyons to the Suns, we could well be back here in a year’s time. Playing alongside Gibbs will be the newly acquired ex-Giants Caleb Marchbank, Jarrod Pickett and Rhys Palmer – and with them Carlton’s status, to paraphrase George Saunders, as the bed at the party on which GWS piles the coats.
It is the Giants, though, who will continue to be at the centre of football’s gravity in 2017. To the surprise of precisely nobody, they emerged from the trade period stronger than they went in. While they will regret the loss of Marchbank, the acquisition of Richmond’s Brett Deledio adds a touch of class to a list already overflowing with it.
All up, 25 deals were done during of the period’s last day and the noisy, wretched chorus of player agents on the radio has thankfully come to a close. In the end, the ground hasn’t shifted a great deal. Hawthorn are still ruthless and the Giants ominous. Bryce Gibbs is still wearing a Carlton jumper and the Gold Coast Suns remain a rabble unable to land a punch.
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