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AFL trade rumours: Jaeger on the hunt for a new home

Expert
25th August, 2016
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Jaeger O'Meara is set to be a superstar at the Hawks. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
Expert
25th August, 2016
103
4190 Reads

So one of the AFL’s worst-kept secrets has officially broken the surface – Jaeger O’Meara wants a trade away from the Gold Coast Suns, and what follows is going to be fascinating to watch.

There are really three factors at work in this one that will make this into a trade that I have no doubt we will look back on time and time again in future years.

First, his incredible talent
Yes, we haven’t seen it in a while but there’s no denying that this guy’s first two years at the level were up there with the best we’ve ever seen from a young player. He was like Marcus Bontempelli is now. Better, even.

O’Meara won the Rising Star award in that year and it wasn’t even close. That’s pretty impressive given he did it against some other immense young talents like Brad Crouch and Ollie Wines.

He’ll be the first Rising Star winner to move clubs since Danyle Pearce left Port Adelaide for Fremantle (and Rhys Palmer left Fremantle for GWS not shortly before that).

These are the kind of talents that clubs rarely fail to keep hold of, and it’s an incredibly rare opportunity for a player with this much potential to go onto the open market. For that reason, it’s an opportunity that cannot be ignored.

Second, his injury
Jaeger played every match in his first two seasons in the AFL, and now has not played a single match at all in the two seasons since. He had a brief return in the NEAFL earlier this year but was then shelved again for the season.

Will he ever get back to his best? Will he go better than his best and achieve the level of greatness we all thought he could? I have absolutely no idea because my medical training begins and ends at knowing how to peel a bandaid.

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It’s the ultimate risk-reward scenario. The pay off, if it is fully realised, could turn any club into a premiership contender. However, if you pay the price and he flops, then your club has probably been set back at least three or so years.

Thirdly, Gold Coast are pissed off
This is the most recent of the three to emerge, but they’re going to play hard ball on this one. Take a look at their strongly worded statement that was released yesterday afternoon.

The club traded two first round selections to the GWS Giants to secure Jaeger as a 17-year-old, spent 12 months developing him prior to him being eligible to make his AFL debut, saw him impress on-the field in his first two seasons and have then spent the last two seasons investing time and resources into rehabilitating his knee following multiple surgeries with the club’s utmost support.

As Jaeger doesn’t qualify as a Free Agent, AFL rules dictate he holds no rights to determine his destination of choice.

With that being the case, Jaeger is on the market to a club that can provide us compensation we are prepared to accept.

Should an appropriate exchange not be met he will have the option to enter the draft.

It’s the right time for the club to make a stance. And we do so for the sake of our current players, supporters, partners and the thousands of junior AFL participants who are building the foundation of this club.

Yes, the Suns are – understandably – not happy. It’s a pretty rough scenario when you pay a big price for a junior kid and plan for him to be the face of the club for a long time going into the future, only for him to up and leave.

They’re now realising that the incredible Suns team we all thought we’d be seeing around this time is just not going to materialise. Harley Bennell is already gone, Dion Prestia and O’Meara are going, and who knows who else may follow in years to come.

As a result it looks like a battle of wills is forming, probably pretty simillar to the James Aish situation from last year, where the club and the player have clearly had a significant falling out in relationship and will be working against each other rather than with each other as they seek to get a trade done.

The Suns say they are “making a stance” here. That might be the smart thing to do, or it might be a fancy phrase for kicking and screaming.

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While the Suns are right that O’Meara “holds no rights to determine his destination of choice”, it is also a fact that a player has to agree to a proposed trade – regardless of what deal the Suns can cook up with another club, they will still need him to sign off.

So, it’s really up to O’Meara now. Will he nominate a club? Or will he tell the Suns he’s happy to go to whoever can get a deal done? Which clubs will take the risk? And what will the reward be? Everything’s unclear here right now, but I’m excited to see how it plays out.

Oh, a bit more Gold Coast discussion – this one flared and up and was blown out in less than a week, but they did apparently mean to have a bit of a go at Nat Fyfe.

Now, it was never going to work. Never in a million years. But I applaud them for doing it.

They’re in a unique position this year where they already have a ton of draft picks and will likely get more in exchange for Prestia and O’Meara. For that reason, they – or GWS – were probably the only club in the country who could genuinely put up an offer that would be close to Fyfe’s trade value, if asked.

While it might debatably have been a good deal for the Dockers to do in terms of the economics of their list, that’s just not how trading works in this league.

For one thing, as mentioned, the player has to consent to a trade. And Fyfe, if he were to leave the Dockers, I suspect would only do so with the goal of heading to a club that looks to be in the window for premiership success. That’s not Gold Coast.

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Secondly the Dockers, even if they did want to take advantage of the chance to get a bunch of first round picks and go into full rebuild mode, would know that you just don’t trade away a guy like Fyfe if there’s any chance of keeping him. Can you imagine the reaction from the Fremantle fan base? Ross Lyon would’ve had his head on a pike within a week.

Fyfe won’t be traded this year, you can count on that. And he says he’ll look to re-sign with the Dockers next year. So, no, it was never going to happen.

However, it does signal what might be the key to getting a deal done with Gold Coast for Prestia or O’Meara this year – players, not picks. The Suns have more than enough picks and are crying out for mature players.

While I suspect the Prestia to Richmond trade will be a matter of draft picks regardless, the question of ‘who gets O’Meara’ might come down to who is willing to make the best offer to the Suns in terms of mature talent.

Jaeger O'Meara Gold Coast Suns AFL 2014

Anyway – enough Gold Coast talk. We’ve got a few other things that have cropped up during the week to run through.

First off, it came up on the weekend that Michael Hibberd has officially requested a trade out of Essendon, and while it hasn’t been officially said, Melbourne is the likely destination, where it’s believed Hibberd has already agreed to a four-year contract.

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Melbourne will likely offer up their second round pick which is likely to be pick 27 at this stage, but Essendon have already shaken their heads at that one and said they want an ‘early second round pick’ for Hibberd.

27 is pretty much right in the middle of the second round so it really is just quibbling over maybe three or four places difference – but Essendon are famous for always wanting a little more than what clubs offer them, so expect them to be stubborn about this one.

Hibberd now looks likely to be the only one of the 12 banned Bombers to depart. Ben Howlett signed a new contract yesterday, meaning Jobe Watson and Tayte Pears are the only ones with their intentions left unclear – and they’re both weighing up the choice between returning or retirement, rather than the option of going to another club.

Nic Naitanui’s ACL injury has prompted West Coast to show a bit of interest in Rory Lobb who as discussed a little while ago reportedly has some interest in returning home to Western Australia. He and Scott Lycett would be a pretty good ruck combo next season, but the question then becomes how would the Eagles fit so many talls into the team in 2018 when Naitanui returns?

There’s also the questions of how much the Eagles can offer him in terms of dollars, and how much they can offer GWS in terms of trade value. I suspect if Lobb leaves, Fremantle are still the more likely destination.

There was a bit of hubbub during the week about Jack Riewoldt. But as Ryan Buckland discussed yesterday, that doesn’t seem to be anything more than a group thought experiment by a number of prominent AFL journos that got wildly out of hand. I’m not sure why we all have this obsession with Richmond trading away a big name – I don’t think it’s a realistic chance of happening.

Oh, and Chris Dawes and Aaron Black are both reportedly on the market – Dawes wants to stay at Melbourne but they don’t really have any use for him going forward, Black has barely played in two years and will presumably take any offer. Big guys do get more chances than the rest in the AFL, but I feel like the well for these two may have run dry.

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I know I’ve waffled on a bunch already but let’s just quickly talk about the changes that the AFL has made to the academy bidding system, because while they have more to do with the draft, they will also impact trades.

Remember the loophole last year, where clubs got the chance to move up the draft order by swapping several lower picks for one high pick to a northern states club that would benefit from getting increased bidding points? That’s more or less gone now.

The AFL has ruled that clubs can only go into the draft with the same number of picks that they have spots open on their senior list. So if a club were to use say three draft picks to pay for a single player, they would get the player and have two of those picks move to the very end of the draft.

Basically, it would spoil a club’s draft hand – sure, they’d get their player, but they’d then be scraping the barrel with their other selections. It’ll make more sense for clubs to keep their high picks and use them to pay for their academy or father-son players, rather than trading down the order.

It’s worth noting that clubs can have anywhere between 38 and 40 players on their senior list and then fill the rest of the 44 spots with rookies, so there’s still some swing room, but only for clubs that are willing to go into the next season with less than the full complement of senior players.

Basically what this means is no more trading three second round picks to Brisbane for a first rounder. Bummer. It’ll have a pretty big impact on the draft, no doubt, but we’ll look more closely at that another time.

I put the offer out on Twitter for people to write in with topics they’d like to hear about this week and got a bunch of responses – cheers all! Feel free to hit me up any time on Twitter and I’ll be sure to get you an answer in a future edition of AFL Trade Rumours.

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It’s an interesting situation really that has emerged – in the case of all five players being mentioned here, they clearly said they wanted to play on and have been denied that opportunity.

I’d be a little surprised if any of the five does wind up getting a gig elsewhere. Drew Petrie, Michael Firrito and Jay Schulz I suspect are probably all too questionable in terms of their form to make them a worthwhile acquisition.

Schulz was reportedly off to Fremantle last year but that fell apart when the Dockers landed-then-didn’t-land Cam McCarthy. I suspect any interest they might have had in him will have disappeared completely now that they’re going for the rebuild.

Brent Harvey I reckon will eventually make the decision to retire as a one-club player, but I’d be full of support for him if he did decide to take up an opportunity at another club. Any club in the land that could use a sneaky forward pocket who can spend bursts in the midfield would be lucky to have him.

Dal Santo is in solid enough form that he could theoretically warrant another contract somewhere else and it’ll be interesting to see if he does look for that. Anyone looking for a smooth kick off half-back could do worse.

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Gut feel is that probably all five will wind up accepting their time has come, but if anything other than that happens it’ll be fascinating to see who it is that takes a chance on them, and why.

A bit of an interesting request from Tony, given he’s the one that started the rumour a week ago… no, given James Brayshaw’s talk about the list needing a ‘reset’, and Deledio’s steadfast insistence that the claim of a meeting with North was fictitious, I don’t think that’s on the cards.

It is interesting though to see just what North winds up doing with the salary cap space that has been cleared up from these decisions (and with a few other players still not knowing their fates beyond 2016).

Brayshaw signalled an intention to focus on the draft, but North certainly do have the salary cap room to try and lure a big name recruit now, if that’s a path they want to go down. The No.1 guernsey is open for O’Meara…

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Can’t say I’ve heard anything specific on either of these blokes but it’ll be interesting to see where they wind up, given it looks likely that both will be nudged out the door this year.

Both are Victorians, but I would suspect they will go to wherever they are wanted. Clarke is a free agent so can sign with whoever gives him the best offer – I would think Gold Coast, Brisbane, Richmond and maybe the Bulldogs are all clubs who could take an interest, but that is purely my own speculation.

Barlow is in a tricky position – at 28, it’s going to be a bold club that takes a bid on him. It’s probably either going to be a club who thinks he can contribute to a push for a flag, or a club that is near the bottom of the ladder and keen on getting some mature bodies in to help out the developing youth. Feels like the sort of player Gold Coast might take – similar to Matt Rosa last year.

By the sounds of it Witts is pretty certain to depart but where to? He probably missed the boat by not going to GWS last year when he had the chance – unless they lose Rory Lobb, in which he case he might still be wanted there. While he’s clearly behind Grundy at Collingwood, I’m not sure there’s a club in the league where he’d be anything other than a fringe player.

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I’ve been a big fan of Will Hoskin-Elliott for a while now – we Elliotts need to stick together after all – but I’ve no idea where he’ll wind up. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another GWS-to-Carlton package deal on the cards, and he might be involved in that.

Ha. Don’t forget Chris Dawes. I’m sure Clarko would find a way to make it work.

We’re still waiting on a decision regarding the Essendon players’ appeal against their bans, and then after that a decision on whether or not Watson keeps the Brownlow – I reckon we won’t get a clear indication from him either way until all that is cleared up. The appeal decision is expected to arrive in the near future.

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