AFL player agents Dan Richardson, Craig Kelly, Shane Casley, John Andrews, Adam Ramanauskas and Nick Gieschen from Elite Sports Properties. Picture: Hamish Blair Source: Herald Sun
"BYRNESY was a bit jumpy all year about where he was at - the best advice we gave him was just to focus on playing good footy in the VFL. I knew Melbourne was watching him closely all year."
It's halfway through trade month and on the fourth floor of a building on Bridge Rd, Richmond, where if you press your face to the plate-glass window and look right you can see the light towers of the MCG, the Elite Sports Properties player agent team is meeting.
Football is often a game of averages, but this meeting shows no two AFL players are the same.
Head agent Dan Richardson is talking -- ESP secured a deal on October 4 to prolong Shannon Byrnes' career with a move from Geelong to Melbourne.
Byrnes is the dual-premiership veteran whose future was in doubt before finding a home at the Dees.
Other players high on the agenda are Brendon Goddard, the poster boy of free agency, and Angus Monfries, a Bomber for eight years who never quite made it big and is now headed home to South Australia to play for Port Adelaide.
Six men sit around the table -- Richardson, co-founder and boss Craig Kelly, chairman John Andrews, agent and accountant Shane Casley and agents Nick Gieschen and Adam Ramanauskas.
Justin Reid and new agent, freshly retired Crows player Michael Doughty, join the conversation from Adelaide on Skype.
Agent Nigel Carmody is away getting married so, in line with the ESP-espoused team ethos, his colleagues help out with his clients.
These fortnightly meetings promote what could politely be described as animated discussion. It's robust -- much like Kelly's public persona.
The former Collingwood premiership player says it's all about the team -- and that gets the best deal for the players.
Former Bomber Ramanauskas chairs the meeting and invites Richardson to outline Goddard's successful move from St Kilda to Essendon on day one of free agency.
ESP was fielding inquiries about Goddard 12 months ago. He was a restricted free agent, everyone knew it.
Three months out it got more serious and Goddard began to contemplate a move. The agents thought St Kilda had made its mind up not to match Essendon's offer -- a four-year deal -- "a long way out".
It took only hours for the paperwork to go through at AFL House.
There was a better financial offer out there, but it wasn't all about money.
There's talk on Demon Jared Rivers, who they hope to get to Geelong. A two-year deal is signed two days later.
Gieschen outlines the meeting he had with Richmond about Greater Western Sydney youngster Dom Tyson. The Victorian was a mad Tigers fan as a kid.
The potential trade was discussed in-house and they realised they couldn't guarantee a deal would get done, so it was knocked on the head.
Tyson is happy at the Giants. The No.3 draft pick is out of contract at the end of next year.
Another player wants to be traded to play more senior footy. He has two years to run on his contract, his club understands his position and is happy for the agents to try to find him a new home.
No one's beating down the door to get him. Everything will turn on the movement of other players. Hang tight.
They discuss the AFL's approach to free agency. Some want compensation picks dropped, others think it would work better if clubs knew what compensation they would get before the period began.
There's a consensus that the three-week player movement period should be split into one week of free agency and two weeks of trade, with no overlap.
It's not just trade talk in the boardroom; there are contracts, too.
One club has expressed an interest in extending a young star's contract early. He had a brilliant finals series. The agents confer and there's a sense it's probably best to wait. There's a lot of "upside" to this guy. No need to rush it.
It's different for another client, an established player who had a very good season. Strike now on an early offer.
There are sensitivities in dealing with money in an industry where the average wage for senior players is about $260,000.
With teammates talking up what they earn and other managers inflating prices, it can be challenging to explain to a player how much he is worth.
But Richardson said once the players knew the facts, without disclosing what other players earn, they saw it clearly.
Kelly spells it out: "We've had meetings in here, not all the time, but when someone's completely out of whack, we've put up some names of guys who are similar players," he said.
"We won't say the numbers but we'll say if you were 10-15 grand apart from that person, that person and that person, do you think you're getting paid the right number?" Kelly explained.
"And then they go, 'Yeah'. And we say, 'Well, you are'."
There are players on the way out of the AFL. Kelly would like them all to join Goulburn Valley league club Mansfield, the side that appears almost as close to his heart as Collingwood. (He coached the Eagles to a flag in 2009 in his first year).
The agents discuss the departing players and generally they're ready for the transition. Some are off to university, there are offers from state leagues, electrical apprenticeships, development roles at clubs and media.
For a moment they stop to celebrate some of their success stories. Gieschen has seen a bit of premiership-winning client Nick Smith recently.
Richardson reckons Melbourne-born Smith is the perfect example of a successful agent-client relationship.
"He got rookie-listed by the Swans," Richardson said.
"The day of the draft I took a call; it was Paul Roos, Andrew Ireland, John Longmire and Ricky Barham. They'd just drafted him and they'd rung Nick and he'd told them he didn't want to go.
"Because he got rookie-listed his parents didn't really understand it. They thought, 'If they've only rookie-listed you, they don't really rate you so you shouldn't go'.
"I drove around to his house and sat down with him, mum and dad and convinced him to go up to Sydney for a couple of days and if you don't like it, we'll work it out.
"He went up there and they had a players' day out on Sydney Harbour on a boat. I rang him the next day, thinking he'd still be sad.
"He said, 'How good's this place?'. He hasn't looked back since."
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