MELBOURNE general manager of list management Tim Harrington says key recruit Mitch Clark has fulfilled “a number of criteria” for the club.
Speaking at the conclusion of trade week, Harrington said Clark was just the type of talent the Demons were eager to snare.
“It’s a targeted effort - you look at players in the 23-26 age bracket, talls in the league, when they started their career and how they’ve come on and those in the 70-100 games tally,” he told melbournefc.com.au.
“You look at all of the players in the league in terms of games profile and you work your way through when they’ll become available and you can make a real specific play for them.
“With Mitch, we did make sure we did have a good handle on all of the players in that category and when Mitch came up, we were very decisive about getting him.
“We made sure we could put our best offer forward and make sure that we could deal with the club that he was coming from. So that was efficient as well as decisive.”
Harrington said the club had been strategic in its Total Player Payments, so it could pounce on a player like Clark when he was available.
“The board and administration is trying to build the club over the last few years and one of the areas that they’ve been able to put funds towards - for a long-term strategy - is to pre-pay towards the TPP,” he said.
“This is whereby we pre-pay players’ contracts - we don’t overpay or pay them any more or less. They get what they were going to get paid anyway, but we bring their money forward.
“This allows for a bigger gap in the salary cap in any particular year and we’ve done that with targeting Mitch. We built up the cap for this exact scenario, so we could strike to get a particular type and player.”
Harrington said exchanging Melbourne’s first round selection (No.12) for Clark was “in line from a dollar term for a targeted key position player”.
“It fits in nicely with a lot of other things that are going on at the club,” he said.
“It also allows us to keep our two compensatory picks, which can be used in a really specific manner in the future years - either at the draft or trading in players from other clubs.
“We also know that Jack Viney is coming on next year [via the father-son rule].”
Overall, Harrington was delighted with the outcomes from the club's trade week.
“Given that we elected to give up our first round draft pick this year for an established AFL player, we still wanted to keep ourselves in a good position in the National Draft,” he said.
“We tried to rein in our picks and we were able to do that when we did a deal with Gold Coast and Brisbane to get Matty Warnock to Gold Coast.
“It gave us pick 52 in the Draft, so our expected three picks in the Draft are now 36, 52 and 54. So we still believe that places us in a position where we can get players who are part of the future at the club.”
Speaking at the conclusion of trade week, Harrington said Clark was just the type of talent the Demons were eager to snare.
“It’s a targeted effort - you look at players in the 23-26 age bracket, talls in the league, when they started their career and how they’ve come on and those in the 70-100 games tally,” he told melbournefc.com.au.
“You look at all of the players in the league in terms of games profile and you work your way through when they’ll become available and you can make a real specific play for them.
“With Mitch, we did make sure we did have a good handle on all of the players in that category and when Mitch came up, we were very decisive about getting him.
“We made sure we could put our best offer forward and make sure that we could deal with the club that he was coming from. So that was efficient as well as decisive.”
Harrington said the club had been strategic in its Total Player Payments, so it could pounce on a player like Clark when he was available.
“The board and administration is trying to build the club over the last few years and one of the areas that they’ve been able to put funds towards - for a long-term strategy - is to pre-pay towards the TPP,” he said.
“This is whereby we pre-pay players’ contracts - we don’t overpay or pay them any more or less. They get what they were going to get paid anyway, but we bring their money forward.
“This allows for a bigger gap in the salary cap in any particular year and we’ve done that with targeting Mitch. We built up the cap for this exact scenario, so we could strike to get a particular type and player.”
Harrington said exchanging Melbourne’s first round selection (No.12) for Clark was “in line from a dollar term for a targeted key position player”.
“It fits in nicely with a lot of other things that are going on at the club,” he said.
“It also allows us to keep our two compensatory picks, which can be used in a really specific manner in the future years - either at the draft or trading in players from other clubs.
“We also know that Jack Viney is coming on next year [via the father-son rule].”
Overall, Harrington was delighted with the outcomes from the club's trade week.
“Given that we elected to give up our first round draft pick this year for an established AFL player, we still wanted to keep ourselves in a good position in the National Draft,” he said.
“We tried to rein in our picks and we were able to do that when we did a deal with Gold Coast and Brisbane to get Matty Warnock to Gold Coast.
“It gave us pick 52 in the Draft, so our expected three picks in the Draft are now 36, 52 and 54. So we still believe that places us in a position where we can get players who are part of the future at the club.”
