THE ADELAIDE Crows look set to be the next AFL club to use the “Irish Experiment” to bolster their list, with Dublin teenager Carl Dias expected to arrive for a four-week trial with the club in August.
Dias, a member of last year’s Dublin U18 football squad, was spotted playing for a combined Coláiste Éoin/St Benildus schools team which faced an underage representative side from Adelaide in an international rules match earlier this year.
Adelaide’s general manager of football operations, John Reid, has admitted that the plans for two extra teams to join the league and the draft concessions that they will be allowed is one of the reasons the Crows are trying to augment their list with Irish players for the first time.
“It’s a chance to get a free hit, from a list point of view. The fact that new teams are coming in influenced us because of the draft,” Reid said.
The Crows have strong connections with Ireland and have been monitoring the performance of several budding Gaelic Athletic Association stars.
“There are a few Adelaide blokes who live over there, so our connections made a list of guys that they thought might be of interest to us,” Reid said.
One of our recruiting guys, Hamish Ogilvie, went over earlier in the year. He had a look at a few lads and made some good connections and had discussions with Carl.
“We decided we’d put our toe in the water and that’s all we’ve done at this stage.”
Reid said the club was looking forward to assessing the Kilmacud Crokes player’s prospects.
“He’s a young bloke that really impresses us, so we’re going to bring him out and have a look and have some discussions with him.
“Then we’ll see what happens from there. It’s not like he’s being put on our list, he’s coming out for a trial.
“His mental application as to what it was about (impressed us), you can’t just have anyone coming out to do that. Obviously we also think he’s got the natural ability to pick up our game reasonably well so it was a combination of those things.”
If Dias is successful in his trial he would become the 10th current Irish player to be signed to an AFL club.
