List Mgmt. Re-Signing Jake Lever

For the last time, do you think Jake Lever will re-sign with Adelaide?


  • Total voters
    204
  • Poll closed .
Status
Not open for further replies.

Jarman3

Club Legend
Joined
Oct 22, 2013
Posts
2,677
Likes
5,238
AFL Club
Adelaide
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.
We can't. They're contracted, they can veto any 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.
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

Joined
Jul 11, 2017
Posts
1,638
Likes
1,369
AFL Club
Adelaide
We can't. They're contracted, they can veto any 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.
Unfortunately the PSD option was largely included as an option to take the "restraint of trade" argument out of the equation.
 

Betts are off

Premiership Player
Joined
Sep 28, 2016
Posts
3,577
Likes
5,476
AFL Club
Adelaide
The AFL has shot itself in the foot, yet again.

Neither Lever or Gov is worth $800k.

That's Walker/Hawkins or Talia/Rance money.

Every chance they'll be worth it in 3 years; but they aren't now.

The market is so distorted that desperate clubs are happy to spend a fortune for hope - its a mess.
The problem lies with the inability for clubs to control player movements. Players have more power in AFL then arguably any other code. The discrepancy between the powerful clubs and non destination clubs will forever remain for that reason alone.

FYI, I understand and in many ways like and respect that kind of arrangement between players and clubs. But the true sports fan in me would like to see how different AFL would become if players were treated as commodities like in other professional sports codes.
 

TrainRoo32

Club Legend
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Posts
2,927
Likes
3,117
Location
Adelaide
AFL Club
Adelaide
Other Teams
LIVERPOOOL
Geelong added 4 quality first 22 players to their list in that off season

Patrick Dangerfield
Zac Smith
Scott Selwood
lachie henderson

They couldn't get Dangerfield as a free agent and make the other additions

Anyone who believes we spooked them out of making a FA offer is just plain stupid
Isn't that the whole point though Colonel?

If we pushed them and matched, they wouldn't have been able to sign all those guys!
 
Joined
Aug 18, 2010
Posts
1,017
Likes
1,090
Location
Adelaide
AFL Club
Adelaide
Did anyone hear McClure on the radio. Said his story was about Lever meeting with players, then went on to say that Adelaide had upped it's offer and that Adelaide and Lever see him as a future captain of the club but the offer from Victoria are still significantly better.

How much more can you hedge your bets when reporting?
 

WFL

Hall of Famer
Joined
May 19, 2014
Posts
31,627
Likes
26,801
Location
Earth
AFL Club
Adelaide
Other Teams
Red Centre Kangas, Baghdad Bombers
What I don't get is why we didn't come out and say something earlier if Lever hadn't met with Melbourne.

We had plenty of opportunities to, instead we said we were ok with him meeting other clubs.

Surely this would have been very easy for the club to put to bed.
Because we are a closed book.
 

adelaidecrows

Brownlow Medallist
Joined
Jun 6, 2010
Posts
12,508
Likes
11,979
Location
Wasleys
AFL Club
Adelaide
Did anyone hear McClure on the radio. Said his story was about Lever meeting with players, then went on to say that Adelaide had upped it's offer and that Adelaide and Lever see him as a future captain of the club but the offer from Victoria are still significantly better.

How much more can you hedge your bets when reporting?
Thats all it is. Its reporting for the sake of reporting.
 

knobby

Premiership Player
Joined
Sep 24, 2008
Posts
4,428
Likes
2,483
Location
Adelaide
AFL Club
Adelaide
Other Teams
South Adelaide Panthers
The want it now generation.

Jake - Stay play footy in Adelaide for 10 years until your 31ish then go back to Victoria for the rest of your life 50 something years, still plenty of time to raise family, job after footy etc
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

jenny61_99

Premium Platinum
Joined
Feb 22, 2006
Posts
50,318
Likes
38,928
Location
Brisbane
AFL Club
Adelaide
What I don't get is why we didn't come out and say something earlier if Lever hadn't met with Melbourne.

We had plenty of opportunities to, instead we said we were ok with him meeting other clubs.

Surely this would have been very easy for the club to put to bed.
Have you noticed how the Club doesn't really say anything until it has something to say? Could be that.
 

Legz

All Australian
Joined
Feb 18, 2015
Posts
974
Likes
1,369
AFL Club
Adelaide
I remember there was a story on here (and other places) about an interstate player the Crows were going to trade in (former SA boy). He was spotted in Adelaide prior to trade week and was supposedly seen undergoing a secret fitness test by the club at a suburban oval.

I knew the bloke and asked him about this rumour and whether he was going to be traded to the Crows. He was a bit confused but put it together.

He was back here for a couple of weeks after his club's season had finished, visiting friends and family. He went down to his local oval for a run a couple of times to keep his fitness up. One time he went running and had a kick of the footy with a mate, who was a Crows fan and wore a Crows singlet when he went running. Of course we never traded for him.
I still remember the time my mates drunkenly started the rumour Nick Gill was going to Carlton.
I can't remember how they spread it, but remember it showing up in the paper the next week, reckon it was Rooch who wrote it too! :D
 

WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot

Norm Smith Medallist
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Posts
8,211
Likes
11,712
AFL Club
Adelaide
Regarding players leaving and having family ties and girlfriends etc, I don't think it's really reasonable to expect every player to stay. Some of them are going to be lured home or even to other clubs away from home for any number of reasons. All you can really do is try to make your club as attractive as possible by building a strong culture and winning matches so that they have added incentive to stay.

What annoys me is why we've been so poor at luring big names back home. There's only two teams in SA, you'd think we would have a pretty good shot at picking up some quality SA talent. It's not like SA boys don't have family or girlfriends when they're recruited. But other than Betts, the only SA boys who were rated at all when we got them (Thompson and Jacobs) only fell into our laps when Port turned their noses up.

Losing the likes of Dangerfield, Tippett, Gunston, Davis, and potentially now Lever and/or McGovern would be a lot easier to stomach if we were able to attract quality SA boys back home at the same rate, or hell, even half the rate would be nice.
What returning SA boys have Port managed to get though?

Ebert - Son of a Magpie great, so it was always going to be unlikely.
Polec - Seems like we didn't rate him as much as Port did.
Toumpas - Were we ever into him? In any case he is struggling to make Port's team, so looks like a bullet dodged.

The other thing is that there are more Vic boys on interstate AFL team lists than there are SA boys on Vic team lists. So it's a double whammy there. They've got 10 clubs to choose from, so the chances of finding a Vic team that's interested in them is much higher. There are also more Vic kids, so even if just 5% want to return home, that 5% is a larger number of Vic kids than it is SA kids.
 

Vhaluus

Brownlow Medallist
Joined
May 13, 2016
Posts
10,269
Likes
10,994
AFL Club
Adelaide
Oh he doesn't have to just presenting a viable option to the "I want to be with my family" argument.

Sick of the I want it now.
Mate honestly put yourself in his shoes.

You are offered 25% a year more to move back to the state with your entire family and your childhood friends.

I think nearly all of us take that deal. Even more so when we were young men.
 

footy4ever

Brownlow Medallist
Joined
Mar 23, 2008
Posts
17,457
Likes
20,732
Location
Adelaide
AFL Club
Adelaide
thats my issue here, he said everything he needed too.

It was more the issue of what he didn't say that concerns me the most.
This is what he didn't say.

"All the Crows have to do to keep me is to
SHOW ME THE MONEY"

This talk about life decisions becomes utter utter bullshit when the contract dollar difference is too great.

Who knows what the cut off point would be? How close does the AFC have to get to what other clubs will offer, in order to make it far more convenient for him to stay in Adelaide, than to uproot and move clubs and home, so that the dollar difference is worth it to stay?

It's the money. Make no mistake, it's always the money combined with the potential money. The potential to cash in on the location like being in the hub of the AFL media for instance.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom