THE TRADING CHRONICLES 2006: ZERO HOUR

SPY v SPY by the Oracle

"If we can get a player that can help our list, it would be good, but I don't think we will be heavily involved. We haven't sat down to work out who we target." - Mr. Craig Cameron, Melbourne Football Club General Manager, Recruiting & List Management.

It's that time of year again - the five day long feeding frenzy known as the exchange period, a time when the 16 AFL club recruiting officers get together in an effort to trade players and draft selections with the aim of improving their lists for future seasons.

Did anyone say "feeding frenzy"?

Well, you couldn't tell from reading the above comments of Melbourne's Craig Cameron as reported in Saturday's Melbourne Herald-Sun. Nor those of most of the others who had something to say about the AFL's Trade Week. Fremantle's Steven Icke said, "we'll just sit back and see what the clubs have got to say." The great Kevin Sheedy said, "We are not expecting too much to happen at the moment", Bulldog coach Rodney Eade referred to working through the Aker situation but all in all, "Something might crop up but nothing big" and Richmond's Greg Miller opined that "more likely than not we won't be involved".

Yawn.

So that's it. All very low key, no feeding frenzy, no fever pitch excitement about the trades. All very laid back as we enter the exchange period.

Yeah, right!

The number of rumours of massive trades during the rounds is not as great this year as in previous years but this is possibly because of the boy who cried wolf culture that enveloped recent pre trade periods. We've all become attuned to detecting the fake rumours and those who start them. Sometimes, they're launched by player managers in order to generate fatter contracts, more often they are simple fantasies dreamed up by those who have nothing better to do with their time. There have been a few this year but not as many as in the past and I suspect that some of the above comments coming from the various clubs are intended as much to douse the heat of rumours and speculation than anything else.

I'm willing to bet however, that there will be plenty of movement at the station in the coming week. Lots of names will be named, speculation will grow but by the end of proceedings at lunchtime on Friday, not that many trades will have been consummated - perhaps no more than an average of one per club which means that it won't be much different to last year.

Today, the clubs will get together in new surroundings at Telstra Dome to meet and discuss each other's wants and needs. It's a bit like a convention of spies meeting together to suss out what information each can get from the other. Of course, almost everybody player is tradeable but most of the "tradeables" carry too high a price tag and this year the exchanges will be affected by a few unusual sets of circumstances.

After two years of relative stability on the coaching scene, we've seen one successful putsch and a few near misses. The result is that one team, St. Kilda goes into the week without a coach while a couple of others enter the week with a certain amount of disquiet among players. Jason Akermanis' split with Leigh Matthews is well documented but it appears to be coupled with the club's salary cap problems and we’re hearing of a number of disaffected players wanting out - Daniel Bradshaw, Robert Copeland and Tim Notting have been mentioned. Young Carlton key defender Bret Thornton wants to be traded to Hawthorn amid reports that the cause is his strained relationship with coach Denis Pagan. Then there's Hawk Spida Everitt who seems destined to follow Captain Cook into Sydney Harbour at some time in the near future.

There is also a topic we can't really mention or more accurately, there are players we can't mention. Three AFL players were running around during 2006 who have been twice drug tested positive and, because it's a case of three strikes and you're out, if a club happened to trade for one of these unmentionables it would be taking a great risk. Fortunately, I think every recruiting officer and most football fans know who they are so I would be most surprised to read that an AFL club has picked one of them up - even if they were provided with some sort of moratorium against their banning if they re-offended.

Another factor likely to have an effect on trading is the widely held perception that the pool of players available for the 2006 National Draft is as strong and as deep as it has ever been in the past. This has led to just about every club, including Sydney, which has willingly traded early picks in the past, to declare that they will not be trading their first round draft picks this year. I'm not an expert on the players up for grabs in this year's draft but, while my contacts generally agree on the strength in the top dozen or so potential draftees, some disagree that the depth beyond that number will be much different to previous years.

We'll all see soon enough how it unfolds but I have a feeling that it will be more of the same with one or two deals holding everything else up until the last frantic moments before midday on Friday.

There are certain to be surprises - that's for sure. Going into last year's trade week, the Demons for example, were linked with two of the big four names being bandied about in early trade calculations - Carlton's Lance Whitnall and Kangaroo forward Daniel Motlop (the others were Brendan Fevola and Hawk defender Jonathan Hay). In the end, Melbourne missed out on both of its supposed targets but ended up happy to get Byron Pickett who proved a very useful acquisition to the club's list in 2006.

I'll be back hopefully on a daily basis to bring you up to date with all of the information (including the hot rumours) that I can get out of the spies on my visiting list. The big worry is that one of them is called Secret Agent 86.