Ex-Fremantle CEO Cameron Schwab admits Trent Croad, Luke McPharlin trade deal with Hawthorn hasn’t aged well

As the AFL industry dives into the rough waters of trade week, Glen Quartermain looks back at one of the most memorable player exchanges. Former Fremantle CEO Cameron Schwab looks back on one of the AFL’s most notorious player trades and admits it hasn’t aged well. But context is everything and Schwab doesn’t believe the 2001 deal that sent promising Hawthorn pair Trent Croad and Luke McPharlin to Fremantle in exchange for picks one, 20 and 36 requires a metaphorical shot of Botox. It was, he says, a complex decision at a crazy time and given a similar set of circumstances he would do the same thing again. The Hawks justifiably argue they were the big winners. They emerged with Luke Hodge (pick one), Daniel Elstone (20) and with selection 36, “stole” a blond-haired kid from their VFL affiliate club Box Hill who was considered too small and slow to cut it at the elite level. His name was Sam Mitchell. Hodge and Mitchell became four-time premiership Hawks, captains of the club and AFL greats, although Elstone never played at AFL level. But the Dockers’ didn’t exactly exit the crap shoot without a prize. While Croad would last only two seasons at the Dockers before returning to Hawthorn and ultimately, finish with a 2008 premiership medal, McPharlin became a Fremantle great and one of the pre-eminent defenders of his era. The Dockers, according to Schwab, didn’t have a lot of choice given where they had come from. They’d finished bottom of the ladder in 2001 with only two wins, had sacked their coach Damian Drum mid-season and replaced him with caretaker Ben Allan before Chris Connolly won the gig full time. They also appointed Schwab just weeks before the trade who was “hands on” in the trade. Schwab consulted with recruiting manager Phil Smart, who had made some complex rankings at the pointy end of the draft. Given their lowly status, the Dockers had the first pick in the draft, a priority selection, along with No. 4. St Kilda (second last with four wins) and West Coast (third-last with five wins) were also handed priority selections. The Saints took Luke Ball with two, the Eagles snared his Sandringham Dragons teammate Chris Judd with three and the Dockers named East Fremantle key position player Graham Polak with four. Schwab concedes while they erred in their rating of the top four — Polak was traded to Richmond after 73 games in five seasons — the trade had to be looked at in context. “It was a complex time. The club was going broke, we had finished on the bottom the year before, Heath Black had just gone back to Victoria, Jeff White was long gone and we had a bona-fide fear that we were going to lose (Matthew) Pavlich the next year back to Adelaide,” said Schwab, a long-time footy administrator who is now a Melbourne-based artist and motivational speaker on leadership. “We didn’t have any key position players at all. None. The priority was McPharlin, but we also had a high regard for Polak and most people did. “Then there were Luke Ball, Chris Judd and Luke Hodge. We rated Ball ahead of the others and there was a concern about Judd’s shoulders at the time. “But the main factor was we were getting no love whatsoever from any of the Victorian players and had no faith in our capacity to hold them at the time. “Luke Ball from memory was going to spend another 12 months finishing his schooling (in Victoria). “Look, there are no excuses. It hasn’t aged as well as it could have because we rated them a certain way and Judd ends up being a superstar, Ball a great, Hodge one of the most important players of his generation. “And everyone loves to throw in Mitchell. But he was drafted in the 30s, was already in their club (at Box Hill) and had been (overlooked) through two drafts from memory. “In those days you were pretty much warned off (by player managers). Not in an absolute sense and everyone walked that line but we had no confidence at all in our capacity to recruit a player from the east who would stay in WA. Both McPharlin and Polak wanted to play for Fremantle when we were hardly a destination club. “We thought if we could come out of the trade with Croad as a 21-22 year-old, Polak was 17, McPharlin was 19, and retain Pavlich we would basically have our goal to goal line pretty much nailed for the next 10 years. That was the thinking. “Otherwise you draft Luke Ball who we had ranked first and had shown a real reluctance about the club as well. He wasn’t rude about it, but there was no positivity at all from him.” It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for the Hawks either with fans presenting the club with a petition after they’d moved Croad on, with more than 200 members gathering in protest outside the club’s Glenferrie Oval HQ. The “Keep Croad” group’s message through a loudspeaker was: “All he needs is a fair go. In another year he might be a world-beater.” Another incensed member said: “This is a strong message to the Hawthorn Football Club that members want Trent Croad to stay and finish his career at Glenferrie.” Club stalwart David Parkin, then Hawthorn’s football director, later described the ordeal as the most emotional issue in which he had been involved in 40 years of football, while president Ian Dicker apologised to the player for shopping him around in an “un-Hawthorn-like” fashion. There was context for the Hawks too. Beaten by Essendon by just nine points in the 2001 preliminary final after a late Croad shot on goal shaved the post. Peter Schwab, who was the Hawthorn coach at the time, reflected in a 2013 interview on Fox Footy’s Open Mike program in 2013, the club had to secure an early draft pick after finishing too high up the ladder to pounce on what was seen as a super draft of talent. “(That was the) best decision for the club. That year John Turnbull, our recruiting manager, said that we’ve got to get in early in the draft because there’s some outstanding players – they were Judd, Hodge and Ball,” he said. “I said the only way we’re going to do that is we’re going to have to trade because we’ve gone so well this year. “In the end you look at your player list and you look at who’s expendable and who will get you the pick.” Croad had currency. “Trent Croad was the player who would get us the pick, so he was the one we wanted to trade,” Schwab said. “I did (rate him as a player), but I thought he was tradeable to get the number one pick.” When Croad returned to the Hawks at the end of 2003, Fremantle was given pick 10 and used it on Ryley Dunn, who managed just eight games over five seasons before his eventual de-listing. Pavlich did hang around, playing a club record 353 games and kicking 700 goals, as a six-time All-Australian and six-time Doig medallist. McPharlin had played 12 games for the Hawks when he was traded but had struggled with osteitis pubis. He went on to play 244 times for the Dockers and was picked in the 2012 All-Australian side. “He would probably be in the top couple of his generation as a backman. If he played his career out at Hawthorn and been a member of those Hawthorn premiership sides, he’s probably an all-time great at Hawthorn,” Schwab said. “And he’s certainly an all-time great at Fremantle.” THE TRADE Fremantle exchange picks one (Luke Hodge), 20 (Daniel Elstone) and 36 (Sam Mitchell) to Hawthorn for Luke McPharlin and Trent Croad.