Carlton is tipped to earn the bargain of the trade period if it lands former top-10 pick Elijah Hollands from Gold Coast.
Even the Suns have conceded publicly they have played the 2020 No.7 selection out of position, and he’s now viewed as likely to make the move to Princes Park in the next 48 hours.
It would reunite Hollands with his brother, 2022 Blues draftee Ollie, and according to North Melbourne champion David King give the preliminary finalists the best of the bargain buys available on the market.
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“There were personal issues he had to tick off to make sure that he can come back to Melbourne. They’ve now been approved,” the Herald Sun’s Jon Ralph explained on Fox Footy’s Trading Day.
“Carlton wants him, Suns will trade him – they want to upgrade one of their picks in the 30s to one of Carlton’s picks in the 20s, they’ve got two of them.
“So the Suns get 400 grand off their books, they preserve their trio of first-rounders next year. Look, he’s a pick seven, he’s an elite runner. He’s been played out of position on a wing. It’s not going to be much easier at Carlton to get into that midfield (though).”
But King declared: “He’ll be in there, Johnny. I’m a massive fan of this guy.
“You’re right, to be played out of position – put him in the midfield and let him go to work. True midfielders die on the wings; it’s just a different thing altogether. You’re out there where you’re possession-starved, all you do is run up, behind the ball, or run back behind it.”
Ralph added: “He runs an elite 2km time trial, he wins it well, it kicks goals. He doesn’t want for much. He just needs opportunities.”
He suggested the Blues could send their pick 26 while getting Hollands and the Suns’ pick 38.
King replied: “That’s the best of the lot.
“Of all the players that are talked about as these bargain buys, picks 30 and 40 or whatever, he’s the pick of the lot.”
Suns list boss Craig Cameron conceded on Monday the club had played Hollands out of position and needed to be “really vigilant on all of our contracts going forward” – pointing to a desire to lose his salary.
“First of all, to play Elijah (at AFL level), we’ve played him out of position a little bit so that we could get him in and play games. I think he’s best suited around the mid, rather than wing,” Cameron said on Trade Radio.
“The emergence of Sam Flanders in the second half of the season, we believe Bailey Humphrey will demand more midfield time and even young Alex Davies has developed really well for us – we believe that area of the ground for us is well stocked.
“Elijah probably didn’t grasp his opportunity that we gave him – even though we probably didn’t play him in what we think is his best position.
“I think the other thing – and I’ll be careful how I say this … we’ve actually made some really difficult decisions to get our TPP (Total Player Payments) to a position where we’re really comfortable with. But I think going forward, we’ve got to be really vigilant with some of the players that we have contracted, if they’re not meeting that level of contract then we have to make some decisions. We’ve got emerging young talent that’s going to demand certain salaries, you’ve seen what we’ve done in the past few years – which has been quite radical – to get to a position where we need to get to – and we don’t want to let that slide. We’ve done too much work to get to the right position.”
Cameron added: “Elijah is not exorbitantly paid, but I think we have to be really vigilant on all of our contracts going forward.”
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