Jake Carlisle to St Kilda is hand in glove, so what gives?

Is there a more perfect fit in this year’s trade period than Jake Carlisle at St Kilda? If the slam dunk that is Patrick Dangerfield is removed from the equation, I struggle to think of one. Yet by all reports, the deal is being held up by both sides. What gives?

The Saints are heading into year three or four – depending on when you want to put the stake in the ground – of a fundamental, traditional rebuild.

When I checked in at Seaford in May what I found was genuinely exciting. After cleaning out the list, both off their own bat and through free agency, the Saints were beginning to build some strong depth through the middle of the ground and up forward.

But they were behind the ball in regards to their biggest hole, which still exists.

In 2015, the Saints played a key defender line-up consisting 191-centimetre Sean Dempster and Sam Fisher – both journeymen of the club, but not exactly first choice stoppers. In fact, they would both be dwarfed (ok, by one centimetre) by Fremantle’s David Mundy and the Western Bulldogs’ Marcus Bontempelli, who play as full-time midfielders.

At times it showed. The Saints were the league’s third-worst defensive unit in 2015, with opponents scoring on 49 per cent of inside 50 entries. Their defensive efficiency rating was minus 18.8, ahead of just Brisbane (-21.0) and Carlton (-23.5). It’s light years away from St Kilda’s 2009 defence, which was the best home-and-away season defence in the history of my metric (going back to 2000).

The Saints had a real tendency to concede reasonable bags of goals to key forwards in 2015. Opposition key position forwards kicked three or more goals against the Saints in 16 out of 22 weeks, including four games where the first and second tall forwards got off the chain.

This data is hard to collect so I don’t have comparable figures for the rest of the competition (#freethestats), but as a comparator Fremantle conceded bags of three or more to key forwards on just three occasions, and one of those was in the Round 23 flag wave.

The trade-off here is that St Kilda were about average when it came to stopping small forwards, with bags to All-Australians Chad Wingard and Eddie Betts the only examples of smalls running riot. Meanwhile, the Saints conceded a well above average 55 inside 50s to their opponents per game, and had nearly the worst opponent goal-kicking percentage over the year.

Scoring accuracy conceded is mostly luck, although is somewhat a product of where the ball is entering the scoring zone and therefore how high quality the opponent’s looks at the big sticks are on average. The former is mostly to do with how the midfield performs, and St Kilda’s young group are still a year or two away from being able to match it with the biggest and baddest. So it’s fair to say one of St Kilda’s biggest list development holes is in those key defensive posts.

What’s an excellent way to get a gorilla capable of stopping opponents from kicking bags? Draft one, and develop him up to AFL standard. That’s very hard. So the next best option, and the one that seems to happen more often than not, is to tap into the player movement market and search for one.

St Kilda have given it a shake in recent years, going hard after West Coast’s Mitch Brown in the last two AFL trade periods. Brown himself was quite keen on the move in 2013, given he was stuck behind captain Darren Glass and a rising Eric Mackenzie at the time, but a suitable deal couldn’t be found. Brown now finds himself as the number two option for the Eagles, and therefore (it’s safe to assume) he’s off limits.

It makes current (well, former) Essendon tall Carlisle an absolutely dynamite fit for the Saints.

Carlisle has left his current club after a 2015 season that rapidly deteriorated into on-field, intraclub sledging that would have made his opponents giggle a little. After the past four years, who can really blame him?

After being taken at pick 24 in the 2009 draft, it took a couple of years for Carlisle to break into the Essendon line-up as a regular, playing 10 games in his first two seasons. It wasn’t until 2012 that he really broke out, playing 17 games as a defender in a line-up that was pushing its way up the ladder.

Other notable things also happened at Essendon in 2012.

Another strong year followed for Carlisle in 2013, and the 200-centimetre key position player was slingshot forward on a number of occasions to great effect. The Bombers were flying in the 2013 season, reaching as high as second on the ladder in Round 17 with a 13-3 record and a percentage of 131 per cent. The Dons had a top five defence, and Carlisle’s role as the central defender was critical.

They began to stumble – as they had in the previous two years, funnily enough – and went on to post a 14-8 record over the course of the season. They finished up seventh on the ladder with a percentage to match. Then, more notable things happened. The Bombers were tossed out of the finals and head coach James Hird was suspended for the 2014 season, leaving senior assistant Mark Thompson to take over the reins.

Thompson was clearly enamoured in Carlisle’s cameo performances up forward, so much so that he set about converting the then-21-year-old into a key forward.

If 190 centimetres is the new benchmark for midfielders, then 200 centimetres is rapidly becoming the new target height for key position players – particularly forwards. With Carlisle and 2012 draftee Joe Daniher, the Bombers had an attacking pair that looked fashion-forward, even if it would take some time to gel together.

But it never really got going. 2014 Joe Daniher played like a newborn giraffe just finding its feet, and while his marking ability commanded a match-up early in the season, more often than not the opponent could assign any defender they pleased such was his ability to get tangled up. It meant that Carlisle was the focal point, and copped the number one tall defender week in, week out. Teams with a penchant for rolling off would have a field day on the Bombers.

The experiment continued throughout the year, and paid off handsomely on a couple of occasions. Carlisle put up a video game-like stats in Round 18, 2014, with eight goals, seven tackles, 12 marks (of which five were contested and 10 were inside 50) and 19 disposals; a game which followed a 26-disposal, four-goal effort the week before.

But in many ways, it was the worst thing that could have happened, because it was seen by most as proof that Thompson is, in fact, an evil genius, and Carlisle was playing in his rightful position.

Under the reinstalled Hird, Carlisle continued to play forward of the ball in 2015, but never reached the heights of Round 17 and 18 from the previous year. After injuring his ankle in Round 13, Carlisle came back and played as a defender, a role which persisted following Hird’s self-removal and the installation of backline coach Matthew Egan as interim.

The tumult has been with him for almost all of his AFL life. Is it any wonder Carlisle is a little jaded and wants a fresh start? He was so excited about the prospect of change that he joined the tyre fire that is the AFL’s trade radio show to nominate St Kilda as his preferred destination.

It’s kicked off some interesting wrangling between the two clubs, centred on the key position player’s value both in his new life as a Saint and non-appearance for Essendon.

When he’s in peak form, Carlisle is excellent at reading the play, a skill useful as a key forward, sure, but doubly so down back. His size and strength make him an obvious match-up on the 400-pound gorilla types populating the forward lines of those around the top of the ladder, while his straight line speed means he can match up on the more nimble tall forwards when required.

His agility-for-height ratio is what gets everyone so excited. A performance against Sydney in 2013 shows he’s an underrated threat with the ground ball, too, with long, rangy arms capable of wrapping up all manner of opponents.

In short, he’s made to be a defender.

At just 24 years of age, Carlisle isn’t quite at his peak from an AFL perspective, and is seeking to join a list at a similar stage of development. More than half of St Kilda’s playing list are 24 or younger, and there’s an emerging core group of players coalescing around the 24-27 years of age bracket in the next two years.

The Saints have just five players aged over 30 and one that’s 29, and for three of them the end is likely nigh this year or next. A fourth, current captain Nick Reiwoldt, likely has a golden ticket down at Seaford, but a degenerative knee complaint is one tweak away from a bad ending.

Two of those older players are the aforementioned key-defender-by-defaults in Dempster and Fisher. The spare parts tall defensive set has served the Saints okay… well, maybe not, but it’s served them… and Carlisle has come into the picture at exactly the right time.

So what’s he worth?

The trade week hot takes are a nuisance and a distraction at this time of year. So let’s take our time with this one.

As I’ve said on a number of occasions this year, key defender is the most illiquid position in the league. There’s, what, a dozen genuine top-flight big defenders in the league, the kind that can play a lock down role on a 194-centimetre, 100-kilogram mark-clunking, goal-kicking footballing machine week in, week out. Not every team has one, and if you’re Hawthorn, well, you have more than one, naturally.

Carlisle has shown at times that he can join that class behind the ball, and while he’s not there yet, that’s not of his making. He’ll be 24 coming into the 2016 season, and with just 85 games on the odometer he has so much football ahead of him.

Carlisle is blue ribbon material, even if a large part of his appeal is what could be, rather than what is right now. And the Saints have one absolutely glaring omission on their list: key defender. Dynamite.

As for the precise value of things? This is more art than science, and requires a keen sense of judgement from both sides. As my favourite ESPN sports analyst likes to say: ‘you never get what you deserve, only what you have the leverage to negotiate’. That couldn’t be a more true reflection of this particular situation if we tried.

The Saints currently have pick five in this year’s national draft, and unless Essendon offer Brisbane’s Matthew Leuenberger – one of the most exciting ruckmen in the competition according to well placed sources – a crazy contract, that’s where the pick will stay. St Kilda aren’t quite ready to part with that pick, while Carlisle’s former team, Essendon, will accept nothing less.

In business, we call that posturing. In the end, neither side is right when it comes to a negotiation like this, when there is so much uncertainty on both sides. The fifth pick in the draft has plenty of utility and upside (a 200-game player, or even a 300-gamer), but it’s only as good as the list management team that holds it.

Meanwhile, a key position player that’s just about to enter prime age is largely a known quantity; but Carlisle isn’t an ordinary player, because he’s been tossed around both ends of the ground in his relatively short career.

All things being equal, the team trading an established player for a draft pick is taking a risk, and so should expect to receive a slightly higher prize to compensate for the risk.

It’s also worth considering who has the leverage here. On one hand, Carlisle has taken a flamethrower to the bridge linking his services to Essendon, and foolishly declaring he wants to get to a particular destination. Essendon still hold his contract until October 30, and aren’t obliged to deal. In isolation, why would they?

But given Carlisle has already departed, and is a negative 400 per cent chance of re-signing with the Dons, playing hardball risks losing him for inadequate consideration. Carlisle would become a delisted free agent if Essendon don’t offer him a contract, and be free to sign on with the Saints once the delisted free agency period opens.

The third play is if they do offer him a contract and he knocks it back. Carlisle must nominate for the pre-season draft, where he’ll have to run the gauntlet past Carlton, Brisbane, Gold Coast and his former club in order to get to the Saints. Carlton and Brisbane have already declared they’ll pinch players that delist themselves, so that’s likely a no-go.

In the end, Essendon are the ones holding the cards here. Carlisle’s manager has played his client’s hand woefully, and it is likely to cost his new club more than they would have been planning on paying a few weeks ago.

One option that has emerged in recent days is a pick swap between the Crows and Saints, that would see pick five and pick 24 move to Adelaide for pick nine (that Adelaide received for Patrick Dangerfield) and pick 13 (their regular pick). It would give St Kilda two first rounders, and allow them to give the Dons what they’re looking for without having to sell the utility of the fifth pick in the draft. It’s a marker of how sophisticated this is all becoming on behalf of the clubs.

Regardless of the precise quantum, my inkling is the Saints know that Carlisle is a prized asset, and they’ll be willing to part with their best non-player asset to make it happen. Whether that ends up being that fifth pick, or something a little lower in the first round, will unfold over the coming days.

It leaves St Kilda with very few boxes left to tick as far as building the core of their team goes. The Saints’ young midfield appears to bat deep, and in Jack Steven and David Armitage it has the kind of mature, solid citizen core the likes of Sydney, Geelong and Hawthorn began their builds with earlier in the century. Leigh Montagna has a couple of years left, as does Riewoldt (if injury doesn’t become a significant issue).

The likely addition of Collingwood’s Nathan Freeman will give coach Alan Richardson an inside monster, freeing the likes of Jack Newnes and Jack Billings (and likely Steven) to play more time on the outside. Shane Savage is still only 24, as are other recent additions Dylan Roberton and Josh Bruce. It’s a list rapidly swelling with exciting talent, and in Richardson and his crew the Saints have a brains trust built to have a go at making the finals in the next year or two.

Carlisle is one piece, albeit a central one, in St Kilda’s rapidly completing playing list puzzle. He’s not the last one, but once he’s in place the Saints’ finals picture will begin to take shape.