Essendon Football Club today traded Damien Hardwick to Port Adelaide Football Club in exchange for draft selections 31 and 47. Hardwick, who played 153 games with the Bombers, has signed a three-year deal with Port Adelaide.
“It is never an easy decision to trade a player of Damien Hardwick’s ability but in the end we think it is a good deal for Damien and his young family,” Essendon chief executive Peter Jackson said. “Salary cap pressure would have made it extremely difficult to hang on to Damien past the end of next season. He turns 30 next year and that might have made it difficult for him to find another club if we were forced to let him go. As it is he now has a three-year deal with Port Adelaide and in terms of player welfare we think it has been a good trade.”
“Supporters will obviously be sad to see him go, as the club is, but the simple fact of the matter is that under the AFL Salary Cap rules this club had to make some difficult decisions,” Jackson said.
“Salary cap issues aside, the responsibility of the management and coaches at this club is to ensure continued on-field success. As part of this process, some players need to be considered for trade. That is why it is disappointing when people are critical of the club for considering trades – they would be the first to criticise the club if we were unsuccessful and the player list deteriorated,” Jackson said.
“It is fair to say that other clubs didn’t do us any favors when it came to discussing potential trades,” Jackson said. “Some of the suggested deals were quite unreasonable considering the calibre of players we were talking about. We simply weren’t prepared to trade quality players for nothing.”
Jackson said that with Essendon only able to complete one trade this week, the club still had some salary cap issues to address. “We have taken note of the players comments recently with regards the bond that exists between this group. We will go back to the players to discuss the various options we have and what can be done to keep this list in tact,” he said.