The mighty and powerful Collingwood Football Club is in absolute disarray, following a disastrous AFL Trade Period that ended with officials openly admitting to shunting a star player out of the club because of his wife’s career decisions.
The Adam Treloar trade was completed at the last gasp of the trade period, which concluded in the frantic minutes leading up to 7:30pm AEDT last night.
Treloar, who had a staggering five years remaining on his contract at Collingwood, was shipped off to cross-town rivals the Western Bulldogs in exchange for a bare handful of mid-tier draft picks; well below what trade market prices would suggest Treloar’s value might otherwise have been as an elite-level player.
The Treloar/Collingwood split came at the head of a massive forced-exodus of players as the club struggles to contain a swollen salary cap that is already at bursting point for 2021; the product of years of unchecked mismanagement finally coming to a head.
But remarkably, Collingwood openly admitted that Treloar’s wife – Super Netball star Kim Ravaillon – was the reason why the 27-year-old was forced out of the club, despite him having no desire to leave.
Ravaillon signed a one-year deal to return to top-flight netball with the Queensland Firebirds in 2021, after sitting out the 2020 season to give birth to the couple’s first child.
With both Ravaillon and daughter Georgie to base themselves in Queensland for the 2021 season, Collingwood officials took that as a sign that Treloar should make a move to a Queensland-based AFL club. But when trade offers didn’t materialise with either Brisbane or the Gold Coast, the club simply jettisoned him off to whoever was keen to take him. Enter, the Footscray-based Western Bulldogs.
In an extraordinary interview on Fox Footy last night, Magpies list manager Ned Guy openly admitted that the club would not have pursued a trade for Treloar had Ravaillon not signed with the Queensland side.
“That [Ravaillon signing with Queensland] was the catalyst for the discussion,” Guy stated. “We wouldn’t have looked to have that discussion… it wouldn’t have evolved from that, I wouldn’t have thought, no.”
Guy also claimed that “We had some conversations with Adam and (his manager) Tim (Hazell) originally around whether his family was going to move to Queensland and whether he wanted to do that and it evolved from having that conversation to he thought he’d look at another opportunity,” despite multiple reports previously stating that Treloar was not willing to depart the club voluntarily. His manager, Tim Hazell, previously stated he was “[disappointed] to get the tap on the shoulder.”
Treloar is scheduled to front a press conference at the Bulldogs’ Whitten Oval base this afternoon. Collingwood President Eddie McGuire has been unusually silent throughout this entire debacle.
Shitty, shitty stuff all around. Fairly disgraceful treatment of a seemingly loyal player.
