MELBOURNE coach Mark Neeld says the club did “what every Melbourne supporter would’ve wanted us to do” to secure Mitch Clark.

Neeld said when Melbourne saw an opportunity to land Clark it had to get in that race.

“We got on the phone and got on the plane and got in front of him,” he said.

“We presented our thoughts and presented where we thought he could be a benefit to the club.

“In signing Mitch, there is a ripple effect - in terms of the aid he can give Jack Watts and Liam Jurrah. So it’s a huge coup for the club.”

Neeld said he was delighted with how the club went about attracting Clark and is now looking forward to coaching him.

“Wednesday afternoon, when it became obvious that there might be an opportunity to recruit Mitch, I was very, very impressed with the club with the way that they managed to get the deal done,” he said.

“I’m pretty excited to have Mitch here and I can’t wait to coach him.”  

General manager of list management Tim Harrington reiterated the recruitment of Clark was “not something that’s just happened”.

“This was a targeted recruiting effort by our club,” he said.

“We’ve also made sure that as a club, under Cameron [Schwab] and Jim [Stynes], we’re building the foundations of not just a playing list, but the rest of the business.

“Once we made our mind up that Mitch was our man, we really pursued it with some vigour. We were able to deal with Brisbane fairly efficiently.

“But it also puts us in a position whereby we are still set up for the future, because we think with the compensatory picks that we’ve still got … and we just Jack Viney next year under the father-son rule. So we think we’re bringing the list together really strongly.”