- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
So, Travis Cloke has officially asked for a trade out of Collingwood – this doesn’t come as any real surprise, but it’s something that opens up a lot of questions.
Before we get into those, though, let me give Collingwood a bit of a serve – because we all know that Cloke hasn’t really requested a trade so much as been forced out.
That’s not the way the Pies are putting it, though. There’s no doubt in my mind that Cloke would be happy to stay at Collingwood if he had been given even a mildly favourable indication that he would have his fair chance of being selected next year.
While the Pies appear to be the ones pushing Cloke to leave, they are selling the story to the media as “Cloke’s choice”, when the reality is that they’ve given him only one choice.
North Melbourne have copped a lot of flack for not masquerading as if Brent Harvey and company’s delisting was a phoney retirement, but at least they were honest about what was really happening.
Personally, I reckon it’s pretty gutless behaviour to spend all season trying to force out a player who loves the club, only to act as if it was their choice alone when they finally get the message and ask for a trade.
A statement along the lines of “We gave Travis a pretty strong indication that we didn’t expect there to be room for him in the team next year and as a result he has elected to explore opportunities elsewhere” would be significantly more respectful towards a player who has given them 12 years and 246 games of service.
That’s enough out of me on that subject though, so let’s turn to the real topic at hand which is, just where will Cloke look to move?
There are three clubs being consistently mentioned as interested in Cloke at the moment and those are Richmond, the Western Bulldogs, and North Melbourne.
The Tigers are likely to see Tyrone Vickery leave the club this year – in more or less the same circumstances that will see Cloke leave Collingwood – and so will certainly be in the market for another key forward to pair with Jack Riewoldt.
I can’t say I feel Cloke would be a good fit there though, for reasons discussed when the Cloke to Richmomd rumour most recently came up, however my gut feel is that Richmond is probably his most likely destination at this stage.
North Melbourne seems like a bizarre potential destination on the face of it. Cloke would to some degree be in keeping with the Roos’ strategy of years past in recruiting mature talent, but they’ve actively said they’re abandoning that to focus on blooding youth.
I’ll be honest, if the North Melbourne list management team thinks there isn’t room for Brent Harvey on the list but there is room for Travis Cloke, I’ll lose my lunch.
Personally, I suspect that the best chance Cloke has of reviving his career and becoming close to the A-grade player he once was is with the Western Bulldogs.
There’s no doubting that wherever he goes, Cloke is not going to be good enough to hold down a spot if he doesn’t find some way to improve on his 2016 form.
This move to another club has to be a transformative experience for him and surely the best chance of that is to move to a club on the rise with strikingly different philosophies to his current mob – the Bulldogs.
Luke Beveridge and Nathan Buckley appear to be very different coaches in terms of the way they interact with their players, and the standard of footskills among the Dogs is enormously better than at Collingwood.
If Cloke is to turn his career around, my bet is that the Western Bulldogs are the club to do it with.
One other rumour that has popped up yesterday is that Brisbane Lions skipper Tom Rockliff is likely to lose the club captaincy ahead of the 2017 season, opening the door to the possibility that he might look to move clubs.
Rockliff has already been linked pretty heavily to both the St Kilda Saints and the Adelaide Crows this season, both of which would love to have another prolific contested ball winner of Rockliff’s quality.
Personally, I reckon dropping Rockliff from the captaincy would be a poor decision on the Lions’ behalf, and they should look to give him more support and mentoring rather than usher him out of what is one of the most difficult positions to hold in the AFL right now.
The view of what to do might be clearer from inside their four walls, though. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one going forward.
What happens regarding Rockliff could play a big factor in Adelaide’s decision on whether or not to offer a new contract to veteran midfielder Scott Thompson.
33-year-old Thompson is out of contract at the end of 2016 and the Crows are yet to announce whether or not he will be given an opportunity to stay with the club next year.
It’s been reported that Melbourne may offer him a deal to join them in 2017, which he will probably only consider if the Crows say no.
That would be a rather ironic turn of events given that his career actually started at Melbourne, where he played 39 games in four years before joining Adelaide head of the 2005 season.
He has played 263 games for the Crows since, and would be the first player since Adam McPhee (Fremantle-Essendon-Fremantle) and Chis Tarrant (Collingwood-Fremantle-Collingwood) to pull the old get-a-trade-then-get-a-trade-back.
Other news coming through is that Fremantle’s Zac Clarke is, as expected, a strong chance to move clubs through free agency as he continues to remain low in the pecking order behind Aaron Sandilands.