Could Melbourne offer Patrick Dangerfield an offer too good to refuse? Source: News Corp Australia
THE Melbourne Football Club should be ready to launch Operation Dangerfield — and be prepared to pay a king’s ransom to make it happen.
Leaving Gary Ablett aside, there are few more exciting footballers than Adelaide’s Patrick Dangerfield at the moment and that’s why the Demons must look to offer him a multi-million dollar, multi-year contract in an effort to lure him back east.
In an interview with the Herald Sun’s chief football writer Mark Robinson recently, the Crows star said that money was not a driving force for him.
And there is no doubt Robbo got the feeling that the man they call Danger will choose to stay with Adelaide when his contract runs out at the end of next year.
That’s fair enough, and understandable to a degree.
The Crows have done a great job in looking after him and developing him as a player since they recruited him as the No. 10 pick in the 2007 national draft.
The Demons took Cale Morton four picks earlier, and they have had to watch as the man they could have had has become a superstar.
Patrick Dangerfield bursts through the middle. Picture: Sarah Reed Source: News Corp Australia
It’s doubtful that they can change history, but they can at least have a crack at trying to convince Dangerfield of the opportunities that could be his at the MCG.
They owe it to themselves to at least put their foot in the water, and have a crack at trying to sell just where the oldest football club is headed in the coming years.
If I was Melbourne, I’d be prepared to offer Dangerfield up to an eight-year deal, and they would have to go beyond $1 million a season to make it work.
That’s potentially a total spend of up to $10 million — about the same money that the Swans managed to wrest Buddy Franklin out of Hawthorn last October.
I’ll be honest with you, as much as I love Buddy, if the Demons could somehow snare 24-year-old Dangerfield, I reckon that’s less of a risk than the Swans have undertaken.
Melbourne might have the spare cash to do it, with Mitch Clark’s retirement freeing up a lot of money, and also the potential that James Frawley could look to take his football elsewhere next year.
So why would Dangerfield want to leave a club that he seems comfortable with for a team that has been anchored near the bottom for a number of years?
Well, if the last few weeks are any indication, the tide might be turning for Melbourne.
The Demons have won two of their past three games — one of them against Dangerfield’s Crows — and Paul Roos seems to have already made a significant improvement to the team as coach.
Paul Roos is making positive changes at Melbourne. Picture: Sarah Reed Source: News Corp Australia
Roos stated this week that he will almost certainly be there until the end of 2016, and then fade into an off-field role.
If he happened to able to get Dangerfield at the start of that year, why wouldn’t Roosy want to stay on for a bit longer?
Dangerfield is a classy but incredibly courageous midfielder who still has his best football ahead of him.
Earlier this year he left the door ajar for rival clubs — Geelong has long chased him — thinking he could be tempted back to Victoria.
His words recently with Robbo might suggest otherwise.
But, seriously, what’s Melbourne got to lose? The worst he can do is to say no, and if he happened to say yes, that would surely be one of the club’s biggest coups in decades.
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