Luke Ball to the demons
Mister Biggus
that would be a massive win for Ball.. Would also be the end of his
career.
Power Mad
>
> Both sides have admitted that they talked after trade week...
>
by then.
woods
Mister Biggus <_b0...@gmale.kom> wrote:
didn't he have 1 year left on his contract?
David Clayton
Negotiate terms for a possible PSD selection.
If Melbourne offer Ball the right deal then Ball will let his current
contract with St.Kilda expire and wait for Melbourne to get him with
their first pick in the PSD.
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
Mister Biggus
of a shock really
Shows how modern business has changed the sport to shit in this
regards...
players may do anything for their club, but all loyalty has gone 100%
from clubs TO players. That is sad. But wouldnt happen if it was a
sport still.
>didn't he have 1 year left on his contract?
Having rejected an offer of pick 25 for Luke Ball and rescinded a
contract offer it had made to him, St Kilda now faces the very real
prospect that the former captain will walk to another club for
nothing.
Ball was left hanging yesterday when, after asking to be traded to
Collingwood, the Magpies and St Kilda could not secure a satisfactory
deal and Ross Lyon said that a previous three-year contract offer had
been withdrawn.
Ball today left for a fortnight's holiday in which time he will decide
whether he nominates for the national draft, where he would still seek
to get to Collingwood at pick 30, or go in the pre-season draft.
Melbourne, with pick one in the pre-season draft, yesterday
immediately made a pitch for him. Ball, of course, could still stay at
St Kilda.
The deal failed yesterday when St Kilda rejected Collingwood's final
offer of pick 25, which they would have obtained by trading their pick
30 and Sharrod Wellingham to North Melbourne.
If the Saints could have passed pick 25 on to the Bulldogs and got
Andrejs Everitt in return they would have done the deal, but the Dogs
wanted no less than pick 21 for Everitt. North also had pick 21 but
refused to trade this pick.
''In the end it was 25 and 62 on the table. We were unlikely to use 62
and, in our view, 25 was not going to get Luke Ball done,'' Lyon said.
''We didn't think it was an equitable trade so we stood our ground."
St Kilda has played an aggressive high-risk game given it now fully
expects to lose Ball for nothing through one of the drafts. It would
rather do that than accept what it considered unsatisfactory
compensation.
St Kilda appears intent on using Ball to send a message. The Saints
have taken the same hairy-chested approach with Ball as Port Adelaide
took with Nick Stevens when it let him go for nothing to Carlton.
They still hope to be able to convince Ball that, like Ryan O'Keefe at
Sydney last year, he can return to his club.
Ball, a popular player and former captain of the club, intervened in
negotiations himself yesterday, going to Etihad Stadium to speak to
Lyon personally about the stalled talks. It had no effect.
Having already traded its first-round draft pick for Darren Jolly,
Collingwood had only players to trade with and St Kilda was
uninterested in the available Collingwood players.
St Kilda claimed that any Collingwood player of value was off the
market, while Collingwood was privately mystified and angry at St
Kilda's treatment of Ball and the AFLPA said the Ball case illustrated
the need for free agency.
Prior to the pick 25 arrangement Collingwood had pitched other
scenarios to St Kilda. The last of these yesterday morning involved an
offer the Saints had raised earlier in the week - Tyson Goldsack and
pick 30 - but were turned down.
Ball's only hope of still getting to Collingwood now would require a
novel arrangement such as Collingwood making significant room in their
salary cap for the coming years and for Ball to nominate at
prohibitive terms - up to a million dollars for the first year - so
that other clubs by-pass him in the national draft and he gets through
to Collingwood at 30.
''In stating the obvious we couldn't satisfy the Saints, there were a
number of deals in play or on the table but in the end couldn't be
completed,'' Collingwood football manager Geoff Walsh said.
''We were hamstrung in terms of our picks, we completed a deal earlier
in the week for Darren Jolly, the players mentioned (by St Kilda as
possible trades) weren't in any way entertained by us so there in lies
the stalemate.''