WINGING IT
The Age
Saturday November 28, 2009
Drafted a Magpie then straight onto an international flight €” in recent months Luke Ball€™s world has hardly been black and white, writes Michael Gleeson.LUKE Ball was 13 points from not boarding a plane to Arizona yesterday.A Stephen Milne goal here, an Adam Schneider snap there and Ball is a premiership player . . .and consequently a St Kilda player next year.It is inconceivable that Ball would have left after winning a premiership.But the Saints didn€™t. And now, after a convoluted, messy two-month process, Ball is a Collingwood player.Even on the night of the losing grand final, as they stood dousing their sorrows in beer, teammates wondered aloud to their popular former captain whether his future was at St Kilda. They were not wishing him to leave or pushing him out but chewing on the same idea Ball was: where did he fit in at St Kilda now? Only 12 months ago it was inconceivable that things would alter such that this very idea would be entertained.€śI€™ve moved on from St Kilda with absolutely no bitterness or no resentment or anything like that at all,€ť Ball said yesterday. €śI had eight fantastic years at the club.€śI thank them very much; they gave me an opportunity, I was just fi nished year 11 when they drafted me . . . after eight years I basically just felt I needed a fresh start and a fresh opportunity. That€™s a pretty simple way to put it, isn€™t it? Maybe when the dust settles a bit I€™ll be able to explain it a bit better.€ťBall was pick two in the draft of 2001 and pick 30 in the draft of 2009.Saints coach Ross Lyon has worn fl ak for not trading Ball and allowing a valuable player to leave the club for no compensation.He said this week that the draft €śmarket€ť would determine whether St Kilda had rated Ball excessively in draft-pick terms when it rejected as inadequate Collingwood€™s offer of pick 25 or the alternative pick 30 and Tyson Goldsack.But it was an artificial market that judged Ball on Thursday night.Ball was not judged the 30th best player in the draft. He was judged the 30th best player who was charging $500,000 a year for the next two years. The financial terms skewed the market assessment, for certainly interest would have been greater had he been cheaper. He would not have got to Collingwood were his terms more agreeable.The other salient point of St Kilda€™s wondering where the market would rate Ball was as much about where he was wanting to go as what the club was going to get in return.Were Ball trying to reach Fremantle, for instance, then pick 25 might well have got the deal done.St Kilda would probably have taken that rather than the alternative of losing him for nothing. But going to Collingwood was a different proposition. Ball going to Freo, or Melbourne, or Richmond, would have only made an unthreatening side better. But Collingwood is a threat.Collingwood was a top-four team this year and the idea of making a serious premiership rival better was a signifi cant cost to St Kilda, which was not salved by a draft pick that it had little taste for in the fi rst instance. St Kilda was not enamoured with the quality of players in the draft, so fi gured pick 25 was essentially giving the player away in any event. So why not ignore the trade offer and seek to keep him?The further confusing factor to the market appraisal of Ball was that St Kilda never really wanted draft picks for him anyway. Measuring him now by what draft pick he was secured at is slightly misleading.St Kilda wanted fi rst and foremost Andrejs Everitt from the Western Bulldogs in any deal for Ball.A critical stumbling block to that type of three-way deal €” Ball to Collingwood, Everitt to St Kilda and something to the Bulldogs €” was that the three clubs involved were all top-four clubs. The fear of improving a rival was paralysing.What the failed negotiations meant was that while many tradeweek balls were being juggled, one Ball fell fl at. His career was left in limbo.Ball had two easy options at this point €” one, stay at St Kilda or, two, go to Melbourne through the certainty of the pre-season draft.Ball told his manager Paul Connors that if he could conceive a way of making it happen then he would opt for the diffi cult choice of still trying to get to Collingwood.Ball then boarded a plane for Hong Kong for a fortnight, Connors went to Noosa and developed the strategy that Ball would nominate the high-salary terms €” that Collingwood could still satisfy in its salary cap €” and worked on researching the mix of clubs potentially interested and whether his client could still get to his preferred destination.To the dismay and upset of many other AFL outfi ts, Ball was then advised not to speak to any other clubs. If they wanted him, they were going to have to take him without talking to him or having him medically checked.The silence strategy and the fact that clubs were certain that Collingwood was likely to get contract terms not available to others angered clubs. Ball had offi cially nominated $500,000 a year for two years, but doubtless years three and four at Collingwood will be on a fraction of those terms. There was no certainty for other clubs that years three and four would be similarly approached if they took him."I suppose you wish you never have to go through something like that," Ball said."From the time I nominated [for the draft] no clubs had direct contact with me. So to hear that we were going about it the wrong way is probably a little bit of news to me because from my point of view, that was just Paul doing his job and I really thank him for how it's turned out. I had got my head around it this week that whatever the result was going to be, I would be going wherever. So I just sat in my living room last night €” I sat with Matt Maguire too €” and watched it. I thought I wasn't nervous but as soon as the telecast came on and they started reading out a few names I felt like I was 17 again in 2001."When Derek Hine called out my name there was [a] bit of relief then I sat around with my fingers crossed for Matt as well."The heart skipped a beat a little bit [at Luke . . . Tapscott] but I had got my head around going wherever and getting a second chance wherever."But he was not prepared for the level of interest the saga of his recruitment to Collingwood became and was embarrassed by the fact he had overshadowed the talented teenagers at the biggest moment in their fledgling careers. "To pick up the sports section of The Age today and see my ugly head on it, I feel a bit embarrassed for Tom Scully and these other young players that I seem to be stealing their thunder but, yeah, it is a huge relief to have it over," he said.The way it turned out was that Ball was finally taken with pick 30 by Collingwood, which was chuffed that it secured him and Darren Jolly for the loss of its first three draft picks. "It's not very often at pick 30 you can bring in an All-Australian player, former club captain, a player that's played finals and played very well in the grand final. It's really pleasing," Collingwood recruiter Derek Hine said."He played every game this year and we've had him checked medically and all that sort of stuff, so it's really pleasing."It took time to do so but Collingwood did what it has not been able to do for some time €” trade or bring name players into the club. Eddie McGuire has wanted to land a big fish for the club and Ball and Jolly were those fish. Yesterday, Ball repaid that investment in him by appearing on his new president's morning radio program on Triple M. "I'm just so grateful to Collingwood for giving me another chance, it's just about hopefully restarting, reinvigorating my footy career. Stats show that years 25-28 or 29 should be your best years . . . I'm walking into a fantastic club that's been around [the] mark for last three or four years at least, with a lot of experienced players. I'm under no illusions how hard it's going to be," he said.The second market test is one Lyon will not wish to be vindicated on for holding out in trading with Collingwood €” how much better does Luke Ball make Collingwood?
© 2009 The Age
