Rory Lobb’s manager Colin Young has fired back at Fremantle GM of Football Peter Bell’s assertion that a trade deal with GWS would be difficult to complete.
Details of Lobb’s potential move back to the Giants emerged on Thursday afternoon on AFL Trade Radio, despite the Fremantle ruckman having two years left to run on his current contract.
Lobb, who played 74 games for GWS, left to join the Dockers at the end of the 2018 season.
While Bell told Sportsday WA on Thursday night the club was keen to keep Lobb, Young said at “no stage” did he tell the Dockers that a trade was out of the question.
“When the news was broken, it was very surprising and Rory (Lobb) was on a boat so I couldn’t get to him," he said on AFL Trade Radio's Trade Exchange.
“We’ve only had light discussions with (GWS football boss) Jason McCartney … so he has a bit of work to do until we get to the end (of the trade period), I’ll have a discussion with him (on Friday) and if everything goes to plan, we’ll get on the phone to Peter (Bell) and hopefully we can appease Fremantle so this goes ahead.
“I’m a bit surprised as normally he uses the code of silence during trade week, so I was a bit surprised about the contents of information he was speaking about on radio and him advising everyone that we met on Thursday.
“I said to Peter that the position we had at the moment (with GWS) we were still working through because the contract wasn’t just there yet and it was only raised on Tuesday morning.
“At no stage did I say the trade was over, all I said was that we had a bit of work to do and we’ll work on it over the weekend.”
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News of Lobb’s interest in returning to GWS took the football world by storm, with the Giants on the lookout for another forward/ruck following Jeremy Finlayson’s move to Port Adelaide and veteran Shane Mumford’s expected retirement.
Young later confirmed that his client would be happy to take a lesser offer at the Giants in order to seal a move.