Brisbane General Manager of Football David Noble has provided an update on a number of players heading into the trade period.
Noble gave answers on Adam Treloar and his potential move to Queensland, their targeting of Joe Daniher and Nakia Cockatoo, the futures of Stefan Martin, Alex Witherden, Hugh McCluggage and Cam Rayner.
Read his responses below.
Adam Treloar
“No (we’re not interested) on the basis that … there’s three things, one, strategy overall, you’ve got to be clear that if it fits into your strategy overall that’s your first tick,” Noble told AFL Trade Radio.
“The second tick is you’ve got to have a spot on the list and the third is you’ve got to have some capacity in your total player payments.
“If I go back to the first one, it’s probably not in our strategy at this point in time. We’ve gone for the tall (in Joe Daniher).
“List spots, we’re struggling to understand what that looks like and TPP, we’ve been pretty proactive in re-contracting a lot of our players already and so our cap is probably positioned around a few other areas at the moment that wouldn’t allow us to do that.
“For us, Adam wouldn’t be an option.”
Joe Daniher
“We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to lodge the paperwork and he comes to us in that free agency mechanism straight away,” Noble said.
“We’ve probably played two rucks in the last couple of years and we’ve seen a lot of games where we have three talls, so we’re keen to add Joe into our forward end with Eric Hipwood and Dan McStay and see if those three can really fit.
“They all play a slightly different role. Eric and Dan can be the lead up guys … Joe is a bit more of that stay at home, create havoc down there and go into the ruck.
“That allows us to think if we can go in with one ruck and an additional tall.”
Alex Witherden
“Alex is contracted. We had a good exit meeting with him last week and he understands the level of competition that’s in that position,” Noble said.
“Healthy internal competition is good, it helps drive players to improve. Alex understands that there is competition in and around that, with Brandon Starcevich this year, Noah Answerth is another one.
“We don’t make any apologies for having that internal competition and one of the big pushes that’s allowed us to have success is our development team and the way our NEAFL guys have been able to perform.
“Witherden loves it up here. He understands where that sits. We’ve only just had our exit meetings last week so they’re pretty quick, you only have 10 or 15 minutes, but at this stage we expect him to be here.”
Nakia Cockatoo
“I don’t know if we’ve spoken to Geelong a lot about Nakia. We certainly have an interest in him and have flagged that with his management, that will obviously play out in the next week or two,” Noble said.
“If he chose to come here, we see him having an option of playing a few different roles for us.”
Hugh McCluggage and Cam Rayner
“I’d like to get a lifetime contract for them if I could. We’re certainly proactive, that’s the way we’ve tried to play it.”
“It’d be fair to say we’ve had ongoing conversations with both of their managers in that space.
“It doesn’t mean there’s anything looming in the next week or two, but we would love to extend those guys and we’re certainly having those conversations with their managers now.”
Stefan Martin
“Like of all us, we’re in a real flux with the Total Player Payments and the list numbers and Stefan fits into that one,” Noble said.
“He’s helped us through some really tough periods. We would like to have more clarity for ourselves and to give him a better indication.
“He’s a player we’ve got interest in, we just don’t know about the list numbers unfortunately.”