AFL bottom side Greater Western Sydney have pulled out of the running for Hawthorn’s Lance Franklin and say the superstar forward is instead headed to the Sydney Swans.
“The GIANTS have withdrawn their offer to Buddy Franklin based on advice that he will accept an offer from the Swans,” the GWS club said on Twitter on Tuesday.
Sydney’s offer to dual-premiership free agent Franklin is tipped to be worth $7 million over five years, compared to a reported $12 million over six years at GWS.
Earlier on Tuesday morning reports of Sydney’s offer prompted outrage from Collingwood president Eddie McGuire and former Western Bulldogs ruckman Luke Darcy.
The Swans and GWS are given a 9.8 per cent cost-of-living allowance above the league-wide salary cap.
That arrangement was hotly questioned by rival clubs when the Swans snared ex-Adelaide forward Kurt Tippett after winning last year’s premiership.
Premiership ruckman Shane Mumford and key forward Jesse White could be set to leave the Swans as part of the Franklin deal.
Darcy said Franklin’s move to the Swans would not be received well.
“I think there would be a riot. There would actually be a riot in AFL football,” Darcy predicted on Melbourne’s Triple-M radio on Tuesday.
McGuire, a long-time critic of the Sydney clubs’ allowances, agreed, saying: “I think so.”
Adrian Anderson, the former AFL general manager of football, said the AFL allowance for the Sydney clubs meant an argument could be mounted that if Franklin does go to the Swans, the league is helping to recruit him.
“You could look at it that way,” Anderson told 3AW radio.
“There’s a very vigorous debate.
“Sydney will say that the cost of living up there is higher and they spread it across all the players on the list and it doesn’t enable them to fund a player like that.
“But at the end of the day, the simple fact is they’ve got 10 per cent more.”
He added there were aspects of the Sydney lifestyle that in many players’ minds meant the higher cost-of-living would be offset anyway, without the extra allowance.
“You look at a place like Adelaide,” he said.
“You could argue as a young player that it’s a more attractive, exciting environment to go to a place like Sydney, where it is more expensive, (but) it is exciting and fun, compared with Adelaide.
“I don’t want to throw any aspersions on Adelaide as a city, but it doesn’t have all the appeal and attractions for a young fella like Sydney does.”
Asked whether that meant the Swans didn’t need the AFL subsidy to recruit players, Anderson said: “Potentially.”
Sydney on Tuesday announced 303-game veteran Michael O’Loughlin would replace Paul Roos as coach of the Swans’ academy side.
The academy program will enter its fourth full year of operation in 2014 with eight training locations, four in Sydney and others in the Illawarra, Central Coast, Hunter region and Coffs Harbour.