Executive general manager of football Peter Bell appeared on AFL Trade Radio on Friday, speaking to Julian de Stoop and Brendon Goodard.

In the interview, Bell discussed David Mundy’s contract situaton, the Jesse Hogan trade, the contract status of Adam Cerra and Andrew Brayshaw, Connor Blakely and addressed some trade and draft rumours.

The situation with David Mundy, where does that sit for 2021?
We’ve been having regular discussions with Dave, clearly he’s a club stalwart and had an exceptional year. At the start of the year, we were thinking that at 34, 35 years of age, this would be his last (season). Then he just performed so well and perhaps the season itself suited his game style as well. He ended up finishing fifth in our best and fairest - equal third but was shuffled back to fifth on our countback system. He had an exceptional year, we’ve had regular discussions with him and I’m sure over the next few weeks, maybe even days, we’ll come to an arrangement for him to play on.

What’s been the hold up with Mundy’s contact? Is it money or list sizes?
Mainly list sizes. It’s been really frustrating and Dave and his family have been incredibly accommodating. The issue is we’ve got a few guys in that position. Without having absolute clarity around what the list sizes are going to be, we like all the other clubs, have to take a conservative course of action. When we were able to move Jesse Hogan to GWS, it meant that there was a degree of comfort there that we could elevate those discussions with Dave.

When did the club come to the realisation that it might be the best time for Jesse Hogan to ply his trade somewhere else?
When we got back from our second hub in Cairns, we had a number of discussions with Jesse and his management and also David Walls, our head of player personnel. Given where things had gone and given that Jesse had felt that it really wasn’t working for him in Western Australia, we agreed that it might be good for him to explore his options, which Jesse and his management did.
Reasonably quickly, Jesse was able to find another club in GWS. It’s very obvious that we gave up some really valuable draft picks for Jesse. It hasn’t worked out but we obviously wish Jesse all the best moving forward and having Jesse walk away from his contract with us, obviously frees up some TPP (total player payments) space where we can do some other things and a list spot as well, which is important, as we were just talking about. 

Is the club confident they did enough for Jesse to try and get the best out of him?
In these circumstances, I think you do reflect a lot. You know that it’s an all of club decision when it’s a decision of that magnitude to give up the draft picks you did. We’re talking about a player who has got some things, off-field, that he was working through. It really is an all of club decision and all of club resource trying to get the best out of a particular player. We thought we gave it our absolute best shot. Were there things along the way we could have done a little bit better or Jesse could have done a little bit better? Possibly. But I sit here very comfortably that our club supported Jesse to the best of our ability.

What’s been the feedback from the members to this move?
It’s fair to say it’s been mixed. Clearly, our supporters don’t like to see the erosion of pick value when it hasn’t worked out. That’s understandable. Our supporters also see that over the last four years, we’ve been in a position where we’ve taken a lot of top-10 picks. I think we’re second to Gold Coast over the past four years. It’s not like we had an aversion to the draft at all and at the time, I think most people can understand the attraction to Jesse. At Melbourne at his age of 23, when he came to us, he had put together a phenomenal record. It had been an area for us where we’d struggled up forward. Matt Taberner had a number of injuries at that stage, we tried a few of the younger player which hadn’t really worked and we thought that we potentially would be able to get a power forward that would play seven or eight years for us.
The reaction has been mixed and that’s understandable. What it leaves us with, I believe, is two big forwards who finished two and three for contested marks in the AFL this year in Rory Lobb and Matt Tabernrer. We think Nat Fyfe can play a bit forward as well and Sam Sturt, who hasn’t had a lot of exposed form but was good enough to win a NAB AFL Rising Star nomination in his debut game in round one. We have some other forwards in there, we feel like we’ve still got a potent mix. We need to get the ball inside 50 more and to our forwards advantage a bit more as well.

Will Fremantle be looking to move up the order and target Logan McDonald in the draft?
You would think that Logan is going to be taken in the first couple of picks, potentially even pick one. It is extremely difficult to get up the order to that sort of level. Clearly, we’ve workshopped a few ideas and we’ve currently got pick 12 at the moment. What we won’t be doing is trading any of our young players, we see guys like Adam Cerra, Andrew Brayshaw, Celeb Serong and Hayden Young as being the corner stone of our team for the next decade. We’ll keep workshopping ideas but at this stage, our ability to attract a pick that would be in the frame to select someone like Logan, that would be remote I would think.

Will you be looking to extend the contracts of Andrew Brayshaw and Adam Cerra soon?
For both of those guys in particular, they finished third and fourth in our best and fairest, they’ve just turned 21 after the season, played 50 games and we are really beginning to see their games flourish this year particularly. It’s very much in our plans to lock them away for longer and I understand that those discussions have started.

Where do things stand with Connor Blakely?
We had a really open and honest conversation, as we do with all the players, and Connor clearly was really frustrated that he didn’t get the opportunities in that midfield group that he’s had previously. What we do know about Connor is that he can find the footy, in his career he’s had eight or nine 30-plus possession games. Not that possessions are everything, but he was frustrated with his lack of opportunities. Of course, with that discussion there came an agreement that if he wanted to have a look around, we were happy for him to do so, but we haven’t heard anything from Connor or his management at this stage where he’s indicated that might want to go somewhere else.

Why do you think Jesse Hogan’s return to WA didn’t work out?
You touched on it there, there would be some personal stuff as well, but it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to talk about. Coming into a new team, it is a daunting prospect, he came in and was rehabilitating that navicular which means you do feel a little bit isolated. Notwithstanding everyone trying to make you feel welcome and everything else, but rehabilitation can be a lonely place. He has spoken about initially he went and lived with family which was a fair way away from the club and he’s said that that made him feel a little disconnected early on as well and he wasn’t able to form the relationships that he would’ve liked to early in his time.
Second to that, he re-injured that navicular so he was back into rehab again, the long lonely hours in rehab. It’s well documented that he took a further period of time away from the game on a mental health break, so all of those things together, plus to be perfectly honest, it is a big footy town in Perth and Western Australia and with just two teams and enormous interest and he’s a pretty noticeable guy as well, so he was finding that when he went down to the shops or went down to the café for a coffee, it’s not something that he enjoyed particularly.

Are Fremantle looking at making a trade for Jordan Clark?
We’re monitoring that situation but Jordan’s obviously contracted and until we get an indication that he’s be interested, we’re happy to respect that contract.