David Mundy baulks at three-year deal with Fremantle
- KIM HAGDORN
- PERTHNOW
- JUNE 30, 2014 11:42Am
David Munday celebrated his 200th game with a win in the Western Derby. Picture: Daniel Wilkins
FREMANTLE midfield gun David Mundy has baulked at a three-year contract to end his playing days at the Dockers.
Victorian Mundy is believed to want a four-year deal, but that demand has been met with a counter offer from Dockers management of two more seasons with an option for a third year if Mundy achieves certain performance criteria in 2016.
RE-SIGNED: FYFE SHUNNED SEVEN-YEAR OFFER
It is effectively a three-year deal and expected to be worth in the region of $2 million.
Mundy, 29 in three weeks, is Fremantle‘s next crucial contract signing after budding superstar Nat Fyfe last week agreed to a new three-year deal for about $800,000 a season until the end of 2017.
It had been anticipated through AFL circles in recent weeks that Mundy and his management team was so close to settling contract negotiations that he could have announced a decision to stay at Fremantle in tandem with his 200-game celebrations last week.
Somewhat surprisingly, Fyfe‘s announcement was made just two days ahead of Mundy‘s milestone.
Fyfe and his management had been negotiating his lucrative deal since last November.
The Dockers are keen to lock in Mundy and turn their attention to negotiations with veteran champion pair Matthew Pavlich and Luke McPharlin.
David Mundy celebrates his 200th game with a win in the derby on Saturday. Picture: Daniel Wilkins
Powerhouse ruckman Aaron Sandilands was the first big re-signing when the three-time All-Australian agreed to a new deal to play next year on the eve of this season.
Pavlich and McPharlin are looming as significant re-signings but have not yet confirmed publicly whether they actually want to play on again next year.
Pavlich, 32, indicated to Dockers powerbrokers ahead of his 300th game in mid-May that he wants to start talks to extend his career into a 16th season, while McPharlin apparently wants to delay any decision until the end of the season.
The distinguished pair are likely to take pay cuts as numbers are crunched to keep Fyfe and Mundy, but Pavlich and McPharlin can receive healthy allowances outside the Dockers overall salary cap of almost $120,000 under the AFL‘s veterans regulations.
Mundy celebrated his 200th outing in typical influential style as one of Fremantle‘s top performers with 24 possessions and six clearances in a thrilling seven-point derby win over West Coast on Saturday.
He continues to claim he will negotiate his next and probably his last contract at the end of the season which could feature a rematch of last year‘s Grand Final against Hawthorn.
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The Hawks have been linked with an audacious plan to lure Mundy back to his home state.
But Mundy‘s asking price in the region of $700,000 a season for four years now seems too much for Hawthorn and possibly other Melbourne-based premiership candidates of the next few seasons for a player about to enter his 30s.
Hawks recruiting scouts are now understood to be targeting a classy midfielder in the range of 22-25 years old as a possible replacement to their ageing warriors Luke Hodge, Sam Mitchell, Jrodan Lewis, Brad Sewell and Shaun Burgoyne over the next few seasons.
Complicating Mundy‘s ambitious hopes to cash in on probably the last contract of his career is the fact the influential onballer is a restricted free-agent despite his impressive decade of service to Fremantle.
Because he is about to come out of contract for the first time since entering free agency, he is classified only as a restricted free agent and does not have capacity to head to a new club of his own choice.
Under that category of the controversial free agency rules the Dockers, have last rights to bid against any offer that Mundy might have to leave and head home.
Originally published as Mundy baulks at Freo deal