St Kilda’s pursuit of another key defender culminated in the signing of Collingwood premiership full-back Nathan Brown on Sunday, but the trade only emerged as a potential option in the middle of last week.
In stark contrast to some trades across the competition that have been in the works for some time, St Kilda Chief Operating Officer, Ameet Bains, revealed that Brown’s management approached the Saints before the deal was formalised for the restricted free agent.
“To be honest, (the option emerged) as of the middle of last week. We’d been pursuing some options and have been quite transparent about needing to bolster our key defensive posts, given that we’ve had a number of guys have to play bigger and stronger than their size would typically allow,” Bains told SEN on Monday morning.
“We were approached by Nathan’s management in the middle of last week with an attractive proposition. We spent the back part of last week and into the weekend putting Nathan through a few hoops and obviously came out with the result we did yesterday.”
Since being selected with pick No. 10 in the 2007 National Draft, Brown has played 130 games at the highest level, including 16 games in 2016 and in the two famous grand finals in 2010 against his new club.
With Brown set to turn 28 before the end of the year, Bains is confident that the clubs latest trade period acquisition still has plenty of football left in the tank.
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“Ultimately, he’s only 27 – he turns 28 by the end of the year. We think that if he can maintain the continuity he’s had in the last couple of years he’s still got quite a bit of football left in him,” Bains said.
The addition of Brown, and former Essendon centre-half back Jake Carlisle 12 months ago, might draw a close to the decorated career of dual Trevor Barker Award winner, Sam Fisher.
Bains explained that the club had been transparent with Fisher throughout the process, with a decision on the 34-year-old’s future to be made at the conclusion of the trade period.
“It’s a difficult one. We’ve obviously been having transparent conversations as well with Sam and his manager, Nigel Carmody, over the last eight or ten weeks about where it sits,” he said.
“One thing that we did say from the outset is we need to go through the entire trade period and sit down as a list management group and then reconvene to make some of those decisions.
“It’s obviously very hard for Sam, who’s been a champion of our club, but we also have a handful of other guys who remain uncontracted who are just as anxious about what the future holds.”
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