Magpies defend purgeof players
COLLINGWOOD president Eddie McGuire defended the Magpies’ trade purge, saying the club had “hit the wall” at the end of this year’s finals campaign and needed to strengthen its list for the future.
McGuire, pictured, acknowledged tough calls had to be made with a reduction in list sizes and a cut in total player payments.
“You have to look at the entire list, the demographic of that list, you had to look at the salary cap going forward,” McGuiresaid.
“The list numbers are going to come back and we are not getting a whole lot of information from the AFL, but at one stage it was going to go to 35 players this year and I think that it might end up heading that way and the salary cap is comingdownby10-15percent.
“It is an imprecise science but we hope that we have got ourselves set up with a really good list and a good team and I am still very excited where we are at as a club to go forward and bring (in) new players and get ourselves set for the next fewyears.”
The Magpies traded Adam Treloar to the Western Bulldogs, Tom Phillips to Hawthorn and Atu Bosenavulagi to North Melbourne along with Jaidyn Stephenson. Collingwood football boss Geoff Walsh dismissed suggestions the Magpies’ dramatic trade moves had been a salary dump, saying the claims had been overblown.
“I think that has been hugely exaggerated ,” Walsh said.
“In essence, TPP, salary caps, they are the bane of every football program, every football administration because we want to pay our players as well as we can. We want to get as many good players into our program as we can and we want to observe the AFL rules and regulations on salary cap limits.
“Salary caps are always going to bean issue at the point end of footy programs, but to what I’ve read in the last 24-48 hours, the situation at Collingwood has been highly exaggerated .”
Walsh said he could understand the emotion from Collingwood supporters after the loss of some club favourites, but said the club’s primary objective was to improve its list via the draft .“I understand the immediate emotion because they are losing what they see as flesh and blood and replacing it with a( draft) number on a whiteboard ,” he said.