If I was doing the negotiating I'd be putting as much pressure on Kurt and Sydney as I could.
The only way we get to deal with any club other than Sydney is if Kurt agrees to be traded elsewhere.
The only reasons he'd do that is if he miraculously decides he'd be happy to go elsewhere, OR he's worried that if he doesn't agree, he could end up at a club he doesn't want to be at via the PSD.
If these options aren't explored, and Harper has said today that they won't be, we are able to deal with only one out of a possible 17 clubs, and that one club knows that we will accept their best offer come the end of trade week. It is pointless talking to Brisbane or GC or Footscray or University or whoever if Kurt doesn't believe we might send him to the PSD rather than accept Sydney's probably shithouse offer.
The more noise we make, publicly and privately, the more pressure there is on Kurt to agree to a trade with another team, and on Sydney, to give us a better deal.
If one of you genius poker players can explain to me how us saying we will not send Kurt to the PSD - and Harper DID say this today - helps us in any possible way, I'll gladly shut up.
We don't have to have any intention of actually putting him in the PSD at all. Kurt and Sydney don't even have to be certain we'd go through with it either. But the more Kurt and Sydney believe we are considering it as an option, the better chance we have of either trading him elsewhere (and therefore getting a better deal, as the more clubs that are involved, the better,) or getting a good deal from Sydney. Publicly saying we won't use the PSD is not a good way of making either of those parties believe that we will.
And hey, maybe Harper made a mistake or we're doing weird PR stuff for no apparent reason, and privately we actually ARE threatening to use the PSD, but surely getting the media and public on Kurt's back about it adds a hell of a lot more pressure on him than not?
I'm all for waiting to see what the result is before we start calling for heads to roll, but I would bloody love it if someone could explain to me why we've picked this particular approach.