DIRECT from the trade room at Marvel Stadium.
Carlton GM of Football Chris Davies has summed up the Blues' 2026 Continental Tyres AFL Trade Period, which saw the Blues add Lachie Whitfield to the free agency acquisition of Joel Amartey.
Speaking to Carlton Media, here's what Davies had to say.
On the Lachie Whitfield trade:
“We’re rapt. We came into the period wanting to add Joel at the start of it and Lachie through it, a person who we think can add some serious flexibility to our squad.
“He’s a person who can play multiple roles and is a player who has played some outstanding AFL footy over his career. The opportunity to bring in someone like that doesn’t come around too often, and we jumped at the chance.”
Key considerations during the negotiations:
“It was to make sure we didn’t have to give away things that are going to be key either at the start of this draft, or for the future. We think we struck a deal with GWS that was good for both parties. It allowed a little bit of room for both teams to think they got out of the deal what they needed to.”
Summing up the period:
“We’re happy to leave the period as we do. Bringing those two players in, getting a little bit of extra draft capital for the future, getting into a good spot for a potential bid with Cody and giving our recruiting team some picks in the draft as well. We leave the period happy with what we’ve achieved so far.”
Potential ruck options:
“Plenty of options have been considered, and we’ll continue to work through what that looks like. We want to bring someone else in, whether that is through the delisted free agency period or the draft remains to be seen.
“There’s no doubt we’d like to add another ruck to our list before the start of next season.”
Wil Parker interest:
“We’ve absolutely got interest in Wil, we think he’s the type of player that can come in and play a role for us in the future. He’s a guy who’s played on some dangerous small forwards in the competition, we think he’s got AFL footy ahead of him.
“That looks like it’ll get completed over the next period of time.”
Maintaining two first-round picks in each draft:
“It gives us great flexibility. It seems at the moment like most teams are trying to get out of next year’s draft, but we’ve got two picks in the first round - our own as well as Sydney’s.
“We’ll consider what that looks like through draft night, and if there’s an option for us to bring one of those into this year, we might consider it. Having two first-round picks this year gives us some serious flexibility going into wherever Cody is bid on, and we’ll make those decisions effectively on the night.”
How many picks in the draft:
“We’re still looking to finalise that with the recruiting group from here. We’ve got five draft picks that are probably around the mark to think about using. We’re not entirely sold, we’ll still think about what the next period of time needs and we’ll have a chat to Josh and the coaching staff about any type of player they think our list needs. We’ll try to stay as flexible as we can.”
Current state of the list:
“We moved a decent amount of players out at the end of last year, and we did that for a reason. That was in some ways to reset what the future of the Club needs to look like. We’ve plugged some of the holes we think we needed to, we still think the list requires work and we’ll continue to think about how we work on it over the next period of time.
“I’m not going to sit here and say that all of our issues are fixed, we’ve still got to think about the way we can get our list better for the future. I feel like this period has been a success to this point.”
