Bold Dogs put money down with reckless Tom Boyd gamble

[Bulldog4life]

The mega contract for Tom Boyd is really the bastard son of the Buddy Franklin deal from 12 months earlier. Franklin's passage to Sydney, on a nine-year, $10 million contract, was a game changer in so many respects, including the fact that the Swans have just been warned off AFL racecourses - harshly barred from punting on seasoned players - this spring.

The Boyd and Franklin deals were negotiated by the same player manager, Liam Pickering. What the Buddy deal did was alter the notion of what was possible. Hitherto, no one had thought it possible - or sane - for a 26 or 27-year-old gun player to receive nine years. Franklin's contract was a new frontier, albeit Alastair Lynch was purloined by similar means, for a comparatively piddling amount, 20 years earlier.

The Boyd deal is best understood not as a massive betting plunge on a lightly raced horse, but as one of those incredibly expensive purchases of a yearling, based on its bloodlines and powerful hindquarters. Boyd is a number one draft pick, he is 200 centimetres, and he was a wonderful junior player. But he's played only nine games. As many an incredulous official from various clubs has observed to this column, "He's being paid on potential, not performance."

The premium paid by the Bulldogs can be explained by both short-term imperatives and the long-term obstacles the club has struggled to overcome. Whether it's $6.2 million, $6.6 million or $6.8 million, the Boyd seven-year contract is an absurdity - it is as unfathomable as Imelda Marcos owning more than a thousand pairs of shoes.



On the other hand, like Imelda, the Bulldogs need to look the part. They wouldn't allow their captain to walk out the door - like Bernie Quinlan, Kelvin Templeton, Gary Dempsey and even Callan Ward did - without gaining something meaningful and perhaps showing everyone that, in our shirt-fronting Prime Minister's words, they're open for business. Or that they mean business and won't be pushed around just because Ryan Griffen wanted out and they haven't got a coach.

In the short term, the Dogs have a desperate need for a key forward. Looking at the long term, they've had a desperate need for a key forward for 15 years, and haven't drafted one who could actually play since 1988 (Chris Grant). The immediate pressures on the Dogs were that Griffen was walking, along with Shaun Higgins, Cooney was up for sale, and they had just shoved their coach. They had to sell hope to the fans.

Boyd, whatever he does, has changed the narrative at Whitten Oval and probably arrested, if not reversed, a run on their membership. The Bulldogs didn't succumb this time, didn't accept that they would just get a good draft pick - as they did for Ward - and take their lumps. No, they launched a reckless raid on a player who filled their needs, and were willing to pay whatever it took, including a sizeable portion of Griffen's contract.

Doggies fans, sick of their club being kicked around, like the defiance and aggression. Even football people at other clubs can understand their motivation. "They had to do something," is another comment I've heard several times since Wednesday, when the Giants performed the mother of all recruiting backflips, in response to the Bulldogs' Boyd Ultimatum (we'll take Boyd and no one else). It remains to be seen that there will be a Boyd Supremacy.

Eventually, of course, Boyd will have to become a very good player or the brief euphoric high will turn to nasty hangover. The Dogs can't afford him to be their answer to Tom Scully, a $6 million dollar man who is far from bionic. Unfortunately, 19-year-old Boyd will not make much difference on the field in 2015. If Tom Hawkins is a guide, it would will take Boyd five years to become a serious force - by which stage the howls from the terraces might be unbearable.

Jarryd Roughead became a gun in his fourth year, Travis Cloke was pretty good early. There's no point comparing Boyd to the hyper athletic tall forwards like Buddy and Nick Riewoldt, who were able to separate themselves from defenders on the lead using unusual speed and agility. Boyd is a big boy and will rely on brawn, so he's more akin to Hawkins, Kurt Tippett and perhaps Cloke. Roughead's nimble feet are underrated.

The other way to understand the Boyd contract is to consider it the AFL's first instance of an NBA-style or NFL-style contract for an early draft pick - in those billion dollar competitions, heavily hyped quarterbacks and point guards who haven't played at the top level are routinely signed for tens of millions and receive "signing bonuses." This exchange period had the AFL clubs and players imitating the English Premier League, in terms of promiscuity and club hopping, but the Boyd deal was definitely more American in flavour. It should be noted, though, that the American "franchises" draft players are 20, 21 and 22, not 18, and the number one and two picks are closer to the finished product.

Some clubs are concerned about the inflationary flow-on effect of the Boyd transaction. If Boyd's worth a million, what can Hawkins or Roughead expect? One senior football official felt that Boyd wouldn't change everything, because the size of the player pie couldn't be enlarged. "But some slices will be larger within that pie, if the player is crucial to team success."

The Bulldogs have become the outlier on willingness to pay a player without runs on the board. They have taken a completely different approach to fellow straggler St Kilda, which is accumulating draft picks, hasn't entered the market for mature players or opened up the chequebook. The Saints were interested in Boyd and probably would have parted with pick No.1, but couldn't get close to the dealing. The circumstances of Griffen's exit - and GWS's own desperation - put Boyd at Whitten Oval 12 months before his scheduled exit.

The Saints, indeed, are arguably a greater outlier than the Dogs, because they've chosen a "pure" rebuild, in which players have been traded out for picks. Nearly every other club either has had an each-way bet - hedging between mature recruits and the draft - or just topped up with a seasoned recruit. The top eight teams, bar conservative Fremantle and Richmond, have all added someone from another club.

The Saints are biding their time, and keeping their dollars in reserve. In the spring of 2015, they might be in a different place, pressured to "do something" bold, and prepared to make the plunge on a lightly raced colt.

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-new...18-11848y.html

[Ghost Dog]

The Saints were interested in Boyd and probably would have parted with pick No.1, but couldn't get close to the dealing. The circumstances of Griffen's exit - and GWS's own desperation - put Boyd at Whitten Oval 12 months before his scheduled exit.

The fact Tom didn't want to go to the Saints probably played a part as well, ahem

[Sedat]

Jake Niall is the scribe who wanted to put the kybosh on the deal the day before it happened. He has egg on his face as much as all the other amateurs hour pen-pushers - this is his feeble follow-up attempt to paint some sort of justification for his earlier erroneous article.

[LostDoggy]

I read "Bold Dogs", smile, then read something else.