The 2026 Trade Period’s Great Deals That Weren’t

Thirty blokes packed their bags and found new colours this trade period, which the competition seems to think is cause for celebration. I’m more interested in the ones who didn’t — the deals that got leaked, debated, dissected on six different podcasts, and then quietly died somewhere between a manager’s phone and a list manager’s inbox. Richmond people know this particular flavour of disappointment better than most, so let’s wallow in it together.

The one that limped on for a fortnight and went nowhere

You all know the deal I mean, even if I’m not about to relitigate the finer points of who said what to whom on background. A disgruntled midfielder, a rival club with cap room and a sudden urge to be “competitive again,” and a home club insisting — publicly, repeatedly, with the enthusiasm of a man defending a parking fine — that the player was not available, right up until the moment it became obvious he very much was.

This is the modern trade period in a nutshell. Everyone postures for a fortnight, the player’s manager does a lap of three clubs, and then it turns out the draft pick compensation the interested club was offering wouldn’t have bought a decent counter lunch. The player stays. Everyone involved insists they’re “rapt with how it’s landed,” which is footy code for “we’re furious but the microphone’s on.”

Tigers fans have form watching this exact movie — we’ve had a few of our own walk out the door for buttons and a few stay against their better judgement, so I watched this one with the weary recognition of a bloke who’s seen the ending before the opening credits finish.

The father-son farce nobody wants to own

Then there was the father-son situation that got floated, briefly, as some sort of three-way arrangement involving a points deal so complicated it needed its own whiteboard. For about four days it was the biggest story in the competition. Insiders were “confident.” Then, without much fanfare, it simply stopped being talked about — the way footy stories do when the numbers never actually worked and everyone’s too embarrassed to admit they floated it in the first place.

The uncomfortable truth, which clubs hate admitting, is that half these trades are run up the flagpole by managers testing the market rather than genuine requests from the player. The kid in question never asked out, as it turns out, or at least not loudly enough for a club to blow its points bid on the strength of a rumour. It happens every year. It’ll happen again next year. We’ll all pretend to be surprised again next year too.

The restricted free agent saga that restricted absolutely nothing

My personal favourite — and by favourite I mean the one that made me laugh into my VB — was the restricted free agent who was reportedly a lock to walk, until his home club matched the offer within about an hour of it being tabled. The rival suitor had apparently built an entire list strategy around landing him, which is a bold way to run a football department, relying on another club simply not bothering to use the matching rights they were always going to use.

It’s the trade period equivalent of challenging someone to a fight and then being shocked — genuinely shocked — when they hit back. Restricted free agency exists so the home club can match. That’s the whole point of the word “restricted.” Yet every year some poor recruiting manager seems to forget this basic mechanic exists until it’s staring him in the face on deadline day.

Why these things fall over more than they land

There’s a pattern here if you squint, and you don’t even need to squint that hard. These three deals all had the same disease — too many parties convinced they held the leverage, not enough parties willing to admit they didn’t. Trade period works beautifully when one club is desperate to offload and another is desperate to acquire and the numbers meet somewhere in the middle. It falls over spectacularly when everyone’s bluffing and nobody blinks first.

Clubs will tell you these breakdowns are about “value not aligning,” which is the corporate way of saying someone wanted a first-round pick for a bloke who’s managed eleven games in two seasons. Fans deserve better honesty than that, frankly, but honesty and list management have never been close mates.

• Deals die when the asking price doesn’t match the form line — no amount of spin fixes that gap.
• Leverage talk is mostly theatre; actual contracts and actual draft picks decide everything.
• Players rarely control the pace of these sagas as much as the coverage suggests — managers and clubs do most of the steering.

What it means for the clubs left standing

For the clubs chasing these three targets, there’s now a scramble to find a plan B before the draft, which is never as clean as plan A would’ve been. Recruiters hate saying this out loud but a failed trade usually means overpaying in the draft room instead, because the hole in the list doesn’t magically patch itself just because the headline deal fell over.

For the players who stayed, there’s an awkward few months ahead — pre-season with teammates who all read the same stories you did, a coach who has to pretend the speculation never happened, and a member base split between “good, knew he’d never really leave” and “should’ve let him go, bloke’s clearly over it.” Having watched a few of our own live through that exact limbo at Richmond, I can tell you it rarely ends with everyone singing from the same song sheet by round one.

The bit where I pretend to have a conclusion

Every trade period gets sold to us as a thrilling game of chess. Most years it’s closer to two blokes trying to parallel park at the same time — lots of indicating, lots of confident hand gestures, and then somebody just has to reverse out and try again somewhere else. These three failed moves weren’t disasters exactly, more a reminder that for every big name who lands somewhere shiny and new, there’s at least one saga that quietly dies in a group chat between managers nobody will ever see.

Richmond people are used to living with the moves that don’t happen — we’ve turned it into something close to a personality trait. So spare a thought for the fans of the clubs chasing these three, currently telling themselves it’s fine, it’s all fine, there’s always next year. We know that particular lie very well. It’s comforting right up until round one, and then it isn’t.