Adelaide’s List Manager:
“Mitch McGovern, although contracted, was finding it hard to work within our culture. He found our pre-season camp quite traumatic because he only realised once he got there that he forgot to pack his pyjamas. Mitch, via his agent, was very candid in requesting to go to a club that doesn’t have such high expectations, so we sent him to Carlton. ”
Brisbane’s List Manager:
“After initially being homesick, Dayne Beams discovered what most people who live in Brisbane discover - that they are sick of being home. Neale we feel is a good replacement, plus we are confident he will bring important intel about what they do at the Dockers, so we can avoid going down that same miserable path.”
Carlton’s List Manager:
“We started with a bang by nabbing Mitch McGovern. We did our due diligence on him and found his lack of resilience made him a very good fit for our football club. We made a big play for Dylan Shiel. We took him to Noosa and arranged for a chef to make a caviar dish, but knew we were in trouble when he asked if we had any Elwood-style coffee instead. A lot has been made of our extravagant trip to Noosa, but we plan to do it again. In fact, we are taking Lobbe, Phillips, Pickett, Lamb and Kerridge for a plane trip to the Outback, where we plan to leave them there. We have made a few key off-field signings, bringing in famed Head of Fitness, Andrew Russell and well as Peter Dutton, who has assisted in sending our Irish players back home.”
Collingwood’s List Manager:
“We were relieved to get Dayne Beams in the last 2 minutes of trade week, because good things don’t usually happen to us in the last 2 minutes.”
Essendon’s List Manager:
“We are really quite disappointed. Sure Shiel is a good player and solid citizen, whose professionalism will drive standards and will help give us a shot at winning a flag, but he is no 2 Meter Peter! To miss out on Peter Wright, when even the foremost of Twitter experts had it in the bag, was truly heart wrenching. We considered bringing in Kade Kolodjashnij, but he failed the interview. Not only wasn’t he able to spell ‘gatorade’ backwards, but he couldn’t even spell his surname forwards. I must say, on a brighter note, we commend the true die-hard Essendon supporter, Will Setterfield, for proving his love for our club by helping to sabotage the Carlton Football Club in joining their ever expanding injury list.”
Fremantle’s List Manager:
“It has always been our strategy to seek homesick Western Australians from other clubs who ideally want to go to a great club like West Coast but who are for whatever reason forced to come to us. Hogan and Lobb are looking forward to being part of our rise from pathetic to irrelevant and we responded to their desire to be challenged by getting another horrible ball user in Colyer to share a forward line with them.”
Geelong’s List Manager:
“We needed to replace our outgoing inconsistent and mediocre player in Lincoln McCartney with another inconsistent and mediocre player, so we brought in Gary Rohan. We were attracted to Luke Dahlhaus by his 2 way running (he can run forward of the ball and then minutes later can run to the local nightclub). A lot is made of Tim Kelly’s request to go home to get better support for his kids. We have sought to remedy this by requesting the help of Gil McLachlan to source 2 Au Pairs for the Kelly family."
Gold Coast’s List Manager:
“Some people call themselves the ‘destination club’. We see ourselves as the ‘detonation club’. After losing both of our captains in May and Lynch, we prioritised the search for a new captain, so we are extremely excited to net the services of George Horlin-Smith. Whilst some may be of that the opinion that the slated Mega Trade of the trading period didn’t come to fruition, that is not the way we see it. People will look back at the coup of extracting Miles and Corey Ellis from Richmond as the ultimate example when describing where we were headed as a football club.”
GWS’s List Manager:
“We reject the media driven myth that we blew our salary cap. Our accounts were in good hands, with Clive Palmer lending his experience in ensuring that expenses were reigned in. We felt we needed to play hard ball with Scully by expecting nothing short of a future 4th rounder for him. If they come seeking Josh Kelly next year, we are going to drive an even harder bargain and make them cough up Ryan Schoenmakers."
Hawthorn’s List Manager:
“We tried to copy the Bombers by targeting players starting with the letter ‘S.’ in ‘Scully’, ‘Scrimshaw’ and Wingard (who is Stuck up). ” We look forward to Scully joining us for the pre-season in the coming weeks and for his ankle to join us a few weeks later via express post."
Melbourne’s List Manager:
“We are thrilled to get Brayden Pruess into our club. We have big plans for him. We essentially want him to play the same important role he played at the Roos i.e. to sit and wait for the much more talented ruckmen to get injured. Whilst we are unhappy to lose Hogan, we are happy to bring in May who will hopefully teach our current defenders that there is more to the art of playing full back than handing the ball straight back to the opposition.”
North Melbourne’s List Manager:
“Once we missed out on getting Gaff we put all our chips in for Jasper Piittard. We feel the 2 players have a lot in common (one missed a lot of football due to suspension, whilst the other missed a similar amount for being a horrible footballer). We felt that our list lacked soft and unaccountable types so we brought in Hall and Polec. A lot has been made of what we will end up doing with our warchest. I can report that as we speak we are depositing it in David Schwarz’s bank.”
Port Adelaide’s List Manager:
“We had a great trade period. We traded away our 5th and 6th place getters in our best and fairest to send a message to the rest of our list that good performances will be rewarded with an opportunity to leave for a better club. Burton is a perfect fit for our club, as his fractured leg corresponds well to our fractured club. Sam Mayes was brought into our club to play the important role of laying our tarp pre-game.”
Richmond’s List Manager:
“We were quite satisfied to bring in Lynch, but it came at a cost. Losing Tyson Stengle will prove quite devastating for our club. We have put years developing him as a relief ruckman in case Grigg falls over.”
St. Kilda’s List Manager:
“We said we would be active during the trade period, so we are stoked to bring in Daniel Hannebery who is very active after-hours. A lot of people wouldn’t be familiar with the work of Dean Kent. That’s good, because neither are we.”
Sydney’s List Manager:
“It was a whirlwind trade period for us. We targeted Darcy Moore and missed out. Then we went for Langdon and missed out again. Then we spent the rest of the period trying to avoid Ryan Clark and Jackson Thurlow but unfortunately ended up recruiting them.”
West Coast’s List Manager:
“We are totally committed to the AFL’s equalistion philosophy, so in keeping with this, we decided to help equalise the competition by acquiring the hack Tom Hickey. We missed out on Kelly, so will instead use that extra salary to bail Liam Ryan out of jail.”
Western Bulldogs’ List Manager:
“Taylor Duryea amounts to a big coup for our football team, as we now increased the growing amount of ordinary premiership players that are on our list. We are in the process of printing out a revised contract offer for Libba after he smoked the first one.”
