Crows need to get smarter. If players we want to keep won't sign with a year still to go on their contract we should trade them to the club of our choice for the best players we can get. Or we will continue to be the laughing stock of free trade.
The AFL has to change the trade rules to allow contracted players to be traded anywhere a club chooses. This is professional sport, FFS. These people are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year - over a million in some cases. The AFLPA has played the AFL like a fiddle - they've cherry-picked all the best bits from professional sports around the world that favour the players, but resisted measures that keep a balance between the players and the clubs. They demanded free agency as a way to line their own pockets at the expense of clubs, but the clubs/AFL didn't have the balls to push back and demand the right to trade players as they see fit in return. The end result is a trade system that is stacked completely and utterly in favour of the player and, by association, the club he wants to go to.
If clubs can't trade contracted players at will, then the other alternative is to take away the drafts as an option for out of contract players. If you're out of contract, not yet eligible for free agency and want to leave despite having a contract offer on the table from your current club (say within 10-15% of the offer from your new club) then your desired club MUST work a trade with your current club otherwise you have to sit out a year before being allowed to re-nominate for the draft. That might light a fire under the destination club to work a fair trade.

