The Lions were the most active club in the recent exchange stretch, with five younger players – Billy Longer, Sam Docherty, Jared Polec, Elliot Yeo and Patrick Karnezis – quitting the club and returning to their home states.

 

In detailing how the period panned out for the club, list manager Rob Kerr said while the club was prepared to take strong draft picks in exchange for the departing players, he said the former Queenslander was in their sights.

 

"We did enquire about David Armitage from St Kilda and had spoken to his management and the like," Kerr told lions.com.au.

 

"In the end, St Kilda wasn't prepared to trade for David so that one fell over."

 

The Lions traded Longer, and pick 48, to the Saints in exchange for pick 25 and 41. The No.41 selection was on-traded to Geelong for ruckman Trent West.

 

Kerr said the club was hoping to "package up" some draft picks to move up the draft order but that didn't eventuate.

 

He also explained the Lions' surprise when Hawthorn landed St Kilda ruckman Ben McEvoy, and the ripple effect it had on the Lions' plans.

 

Before that, the Hawks had expressed their desire to recruit Longer, but it led to a complicated turn of events for a number of different Lions trades.

 

"Hawthorn had indicated before the trade period they were fairly keen on trading for Billy," Kerr said.

 

"During the first day of trade [period], they spoke about an early pick in the 20s, I think they felt they'd probably get Melbourne's second-round pick as part of a trade possibly for Shane Savage.

 

"And that's all they were prepared to offer, and they didn't even actually offer that on that first day, it was just the talk.

 

"We said we want one of their first-round picks, because we knew they were going to get pick 18 for the [Lance Franklin] compensation pick.

 

"Where that parlayed into our strategy was we knew if we could get an early pick we could then slide picks with Port Adelaide to get their first-round pick.

 

"It intertwined with the Jared Polec trade, or was potentially going to. Then on the second day when we tried to continue talks with Hawthorn and the phones suddenly went very quiet, and there was no returned calls or anything like that.

 

"I thought 'Something's up here' and it was the next morning we learnt about the McEvoy trade."

 

That had other another impact for the Lions, who were working on a subsequent trade with the Hawks regarding a swap of picks.  

 

Kerr said the club had attempted to re-sign the five departing players from the start of the season.

 

"We'd had offers and had been talking to agents about those players from early in the year," he said.

"We'd done a lot of work and had a lot of discussions. Even after they said they wanted to go home, Justin Leppitsch was appointed, and he sat down with each player and spoke with them about his game plan and where he saw them fitting in.

"But in the end, you can't force a player to sign. We certainly did all we could to try and retain those players. I can honestly say there's not much more we could have done."

 

Twitter: @AFL_CalTwomey