Port Adelaide's classy Motlop moves leave the Crows looking silly

From the outside looking in, the Adelaide Crows’ handling of this year’s trade period hasn’t been as classy as it could have.

The spite and bitterness that was evident in their reaction to Jake Lever’s trade request hasn’t done much to win them respect from the broader AFL community.

On top of that, the staunch refusal to allow Charlie Cameron a trade home to Queensland continues to draw an eye.

They have every right to behave the way they have in both cases, as Lever’s decision was remarkably disappointing and Cameron is a contracted player.

Credit to them, they seem to have calmed down a bit, and getting the Lever deal done early was applause-worthy professionalism. I imagine also that many of their fans will have appreciated them taking a hardline stance.

In terms of public perception though the damage was already done – all the carrying on has made them look a bit silly and worse yet, it set up a perfect opportunity for Port Adelaide to show them up.

Port have taken that opportunity with both hands and the way they have handled both the departure and arrival of players has been as stylish as you can ask for.

Departees Jackson Trengove and Jarman Impey – both only kind of in the Power’s best 22 this year – were given rousing media send-offs like they were Sam Mitchell and Luke Hodge.

At the same time they’ve managed to sign two free agents while their crosstown rivals were trading away a talented kid and asking themselves what do with the other.

(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

It’s a bit iffy whether Port Adelaide really is a better place to be and play football than the Crows, but the way Port have played things this year will embolden proponents of that point of view.

The Motlop situation, in particular, worked out as well for Port Adelaide as it possibly could have.

When the AFL season ended reports came through that they were the favourites to land Motlop’s signature, but things appeared to take a bad turn when news came out claiming the Adelaide Crows had rushed into the race with a larger financial offer.

At that stage the word was that Adelaide were offering Motlop $600,000 per year compared to Port Adelaide’s offer being reportedly around $450,000.

This is a financial difference that no matter how far advanced a rival’s pursuit is you’d think it would blow it out of the water, especially when the team offering more money happen to be minor premiers and grand finalists this year.

Despite this, Motlop signed a four-year deal with Port Adelaide on Friday, and officially became a Power player when Geelong declined to match the offer on Saturday.

Cue the raucous celebrations from Port Adelaide fans, who had won an offseason edition of the Showdown.

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Motlop’s arrival has received almost universal acclaim from the Port Adelaide faithful. The fact that they beat out Adelaide for him has distracted them all for the reality that he’s a remarkably frustrating and incomplete player.

Motlop picking them despite a reported larger financial offer from the Crows has given them reason enough to say: not only are we the club players prefer in South Australia, but they prefer us so much they’ll play for much less than they could get elsewhere!

But is this really true? I have my doubts.

The initial report of Adelaide’s big money offer for Motlop came from literal-firefighter-turned-metaphorical-firestarter Kane Cornes, whose allegiances inside the battle for South Australian supremacy are by no means a state secret.

It really only takes one bloke to say anything in the AFL media sphere and within a few minutes it’s repeated ad nauseam across all outlets until we all take it unanimously as fact, and so was the case with Cornes’ scoop.

I’m certainly not accusing him of exaggerating what Adelaide’s offer to Steven Motlop was, let’s be very clear on that. But I will say this – if you wanted to damage Adelaide’s media cred and pump up Port’s, that would’ve been a smooth, smart play.

The other question, of course, is whether or not Port Adelaide’s offer to Motlop is the size it has been reported as.

It did seem to increase somewhere along the line from $450,000 to $500,000 per year, and it’s a four-year deal – we don’t know what kind of length of contract Adelaide were offering.

That’s exactly the same terms as was reported for Chris Mayne joining Collingwood last year however, and at a time when the average AFL wage was much smaller, but this only secured Fremantle a second-round compensation pick.

Motlop’s departure however has secured Geelong end-of-first-round compensation, even though the average AFL wage – which free agency compensation is measured against – increased radically during the year when the new CBA was locked in.

What can possibly account for this discrepancy?

The first possibility is age. Motlop is two years younger than Mayne was when the deals were signed and this does reportedly factor into free agency compensation to some degree, exactly how we don’t know.

Given that both players received the same length of contract though, I find it hard to believe that a two-year age difference could be enough not just to clear the increased salary cap but also push Motlop into a yet still higher bracket of compensation.

Second is the notion that the AFL has fiddled with the results to some degree. There is a provision in the rules for them to do this, and it’s not hard to come up with a tin foil hat theory or two about why they might… but we’ll talk more about that another time, should events play out in an incriminating way.

The third possibility, of course, and probably the most likely by way of Occam’s razor, is that Port Adelaide are paying Steven Motlop more – perhaps much, much more – than we think they are.

(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

This would explain both why Geelong’s compensation pick in return for Motlop is so much higher than expected, and also give a reason as to why Motlop picked Port over the Crows.

If the financial offer from Port Adelaide was, in fact, more comparable with that of Adelaide’s than we have been lead to believe – or even better – then that demystifies the decision a great deal.

Of course, without getting in a good look at facts and figures we will really never know exactly what the numbers and negotiations were on this one, so the debate is probably moot. Curious, though.

All we can say for certain is that Port Adelaide’s smooth negotiation of the media means they have come out of the first week of the trade period smelling like a garden of roses, while the Crows’ scent is more akin to the fertilizer that would feed one.

The Herald Sun have already declared them one of the ‘big winners’ of this year’s trade period, and if you can get the media to look at you with that kind of love in their eyes after picking up perennial whipping boys Motlop, Rockliff and soon Jack Watts, you deserve a Gold Logie.

Is that trio of players really what Port need to take the step from mediocrity to contention? Colour me extremely sceptical, but we’ll find out one way or another in 2018.

Whether or not the recruitments turn to be a winner, though, the way the club has handled them publicly definitely has been.

Port have lost nearly 2000 members in the past two years after hitting their highest mark in 2015, but I’ll be surprised if they don’t set a new club record next year.