The Brisbane Lions will continue to draft interstate talent despite facing the possibility of losing up to five young players to ‘homesickness’ in the upcoming trade period.
Jared Polec (pick No.5 in 2010), Sam Docherty (No.12 in 2011), Patrick Karnezis (No.25 in 2010), Billy Longer (No.8 in 2011) and Elliot Yeo (No.30 in 2011) are five emerging youngsters who have made headlines with their intentions to move to their respective home states.
National Talent Manager, Rob Kerr told LionsTV’s Fancast that the Lions may need to look a little closer at players to measure their capability of transitioning into an interstate club, but has frank observations about taking on interstate draftees.
“The reality is, when you move an 18-year old player away from every support network he has known, you’re not going to be able to predict with 100% accuracy how they’re going to transition,”
“You do have to back your club in to be able to manage that and get the boys ingrained in the culture.”
Kerr couldn’t quite put his finger on the reason for an unprecedented five players requesting trades, but believes that the club has a responsibility to deal with possible problems that may arise for young interstate players.
“For whatever reason, they haven’t quite laid down the roots that we would’ve liked them to have laid down in Brisbane, so across the whole, every area of the football club, I think we have to assess what needs to be done better,” Kerr said
“I’m yet to see a problem where there’s not contributions from a whole lot of different areas and in some cases, perhaps a player himself might have been more willing to come forward and express some of the issues that he had and that might’ve allowed us to address some of them,”
While homesickness has been the most talked about reason for the players wanting to go home, Kerr believes there is more to it.
“The only real common theme is that they do all talk about homesickness, but you got to drill down further than that,”
The trade period begins on Monday, October 7 at 10am.
Lachlan Dyson is a regular contributor to lions.com.au. You can follow him on Twitter: @lachlandyson
