ESSENDON has paid a high price to keep Cale Hooker, but its investment return could far exceed the All Australian defender's on-field output over the next five seasons.

When we talk about the cost of keeping Hooker, we're not so much talking about his lucrative new salary.

About $750,000 a year is good money if you can get it, but Hooker could have got more elsewhere – a deal of more $900,000 a season was understood to have been on the table from at least one of the Bombers' rival suitors.

Five years is also an extremely generous term for someone who turns 28 in October but, again, clubs such as Fremantle, Hawthorn and North Melbourne were prepared to offer deals just as long, if not longer.

The real cost to the Bombers of re-signing Hooker is giving up the first-round compensation pick it would have received if he left as an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season.

Given the Bombers are likely to finish last or second-last – Carlton appears their only serious rival for 2016's wooden spoon – that pick would almost certainly have been No.2 or No.3 in this year's national draft.

For a club that finished 15th last season – and was subsequently weakened by Jake Carlisle's departure in the trade period – it must have been tempting to add two top-three picks to the two top-six picks, Darcy Parish and Aaron Francis, it netted in last year's draft.

Especially when the club's access to top-end talent in 2013 and 2014 had been restricted by draft sanctions relating to its 2012 supplements program.

Two top-three picks would have been a serious injection of young talent for a club that – at the very least – is in need of a decent renovation.

But Essendon has resisted that temptation and re-signed its reigning best and fairest winner – as it had consistently said it would.

By doing so, the Bombers can't have hurt their chances of re-signing the nine suspended players yet to recommit to the club.

Because with all due respect to Heath Hocking and Travis Colyer, Hooker is the first big-name to re-sign.

The key defender and sometime forward will immediately stiffen Essendon's spine in 2017.

A suspended Bomber who might have been tempted to jump ship in search of on-field success elsewhere might look at Hooker recommitting and think they can now achieve the same success at Tullamarine before their career's over.

And what if Dyson Heppell, Michael Hurley, Michael Hibberd and Tom Bellchambers follow Hooker's lead and re-sign? Well, suddenly, Essendon is looking like a highly competitive outfit once again.

Heppell, 24, and Hurley, 25, remain the obvious priorities among the unsigned Dons given their relative youth and elite talent.

There has been plenty of speculation about their futures, particularly Hurley's, but rival clubs now believe neither is going anywhere.

Of course, Essendon is also sweating on long-time skipper Jobe Watson returning to the club and rediscovering his love of the game after a harrowing three years.

Seeing Hooker return – and possibly Heppell and Hurley in the near future – could only aid the Bombers' attempts to woo Watson back to Tullamarine.

In this respect, Essendon's new deal with Hooker could pay off more than any first-round draft pick.