Hawks want no Cloke saga with Franklin

Hawthorn chief executive Stuart Fox says the AFL club are anxious to avoid the sort of public contract wrangle with Lance Franklin that Collingwood are experiencing with Travis Cloke.

The Hawks superstar is due to become a restricted free agent when his contract expires at the end of 2013.

Fox said Hawthorn wanted a new deal in place this year, else they would be entering “dangerous territory”.

“You’ve seen the issues around Collingwood with Travis Cloke. I don’t want that for our football club,” Fox said at a club function ahead of Sunday’s clash with Greater Western Sydney.

“Because when you try to perform and the focus is on one individual I think it can detract from your goal.

“So we will work towards signing Buddy hopefully at the end of the year.

“We’re in a very competitive market, we’re dealing with free agency.

“He is a restricted free agent at the end of his contract, which means if another club happened to make him an offer, we would have to match it.

“So it’s very dangerous territory to be talking about that, because if he does get a really big offer, we are bigger than just Buddy, so we’ve got to be able to fit them all in.”

Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley has said the image of both Cloke and the Magpies has been hurt by their highly-public ongoing negotiations.

The Magpies star has been offered a five-year deal from Fremantle worth about $1 million-per-season, considerably more than Collingwood’s offer.

Fox also said the Hawks had budgeted for a profit of $950,000 this year, but were set to exceed that by at least $300,000-$500,000, or more if they pushed deep into finals.

He said the Hawks were also starting a six-month project to develop a plan for improved facilities, saying their current Waverley base was only about the 14th best in the AFL.

And he said while he supported the AFL’s expansion, the creation of the Giants and Gold Coast had significantly affected the fixture’s fairness.

“I’ve just got no doubt that it’s actually really compromised the fixture,” Fox said.

“It’s going to continue to do that for the next, I would say, three or four years.”

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