Port Adelaide chief executive Matthew Richardson has spoken to the Adelaide media regarding Zak Butters’ decision to exercise his rights to free agency.
Butters officially informed the club on Monday that he wishes to return home to Victoria, with the club to work through obtaining the best possible outcome once the trade period opens on October 5.
Richardson on Zak Butters’ free agency
“Zak Butters and his management informed the club today that he would exercise his rights to free agency and seek a return home to Victoria. I just want to say two things about Zak. One, he's been an absolutely outstanding contributor to our football club from the moment he was drafted. He's a three-time best and fairest winner, two-time, possibly three-time All Australian, and has been a champion of our football club. This year is a great example where, given the challenges we had across the year, plus the challenges he's been working through himself personally, he has had an outstanding year on field, and his leadership also stepping in for Connor. I know he's a favourite of our members and our fans, and our whole club loves Zak. We thank him and wish him the best for the future. I guess second is where to next? What I'd say there is that we're probably at the start, not the end. So Zak's a restricted free agent. With that, the club does have some options, and our responsibility will be to ensure that we get the absolute best outcome for Port Adelaide and our future. Trade week doesn't open until the second of October. It finishes on the 14th, so there's a lot to play out. I'm not going to go into the detail of that today. I'll leave that for our list management team, who will be really well prepared on that. But just to say that our priority now will be to make sure that we get the absolute best outcome for the Port Adelaide Football Club.”
Richardson on receiving the news
“We met with Zak and his manager this morning just to confirm the news, which, the longer these things go, and we're realists also, but given how highly we rate Zak, we wanted to give it absolutely everything. We've been working on this for 18 months, so probably in the end didn't come as a shock. But what I'd say to our members and our supporters is that we've done absolutely everything in order to try and find a position that would see Zak remain, but we also understand there are some personal circumstances that are really important to Zak, and we respect those. So we understand his reasons for wanting to get home to Victoria.”
Richardson on the mechanics of the possible deal
“I think I'm not really going to get into all that detail. The club has got plenty of options. Our priority will be to make sure that we're getting the best outcome for Port Adelaide.”
“He absolutely has (expressed his desire for the club to get what it deserves in a trade) privately, and I think he's done that public publicly as well. The Port Adelaide Football Club has been a very important part of Zak's life. He's grown up with a group of people for the last seven or eight years, and as I said, Zak Butters will always be a very special player here at Port Adelaide. He'll always be a Port Adelaide person, and yes, there's a business side to this, and our focus will be making sure that we get the best outcome for Port Adelaide.
“Clearly he's a great player. He's one of the great players in the competition, and he's a favourite, absolutely, with our fans and members. So we share the disappointment. At the same time, he's one player. He's a very good player. Our responsibility now is to make sure we bring in the next Zak Butters and hopefully more, to make sure we set up the Port Adelaide Football Club for the future.”
Richardson on Butters making his decision
“I do know he was quite emotional this morning when he spoke, and as I said earlier, he's grown up here, he’s spent seven or eight years of his life here. He's got great mates here, but also there's a great draw back to Melbourne. And I think the fact that we're here the day after the season finishes, it says that it hasn't been an easy decision for him.”
Richardson on preparing for this possibility
“I mean, first and foremost, our responsibility was to do everything we possibly could (to retain Zak) and I know that we absolutely did that. As I said earlier, we've been preparing for this for 18 months, either way. We're really excited about what's ahead in terms of the draft. We've said publicly we're a club that we need to get into the draft. We need to get into the high end of the draft, and we're confident that if we can do that, we're going to be able to bring in some exciting talent that's going to help us transform our list very quickly.”
Richardson on retaining interstate players
“We've got a great track record of attracting and retaining players from everywhere, and it's always about building a great culture, having a great environment. This is one situation which is a little bit unique, but on the same side, you've got Ollie Wines, who hopefully, is going to play for another year. There are great examples of players that are coming from interstate and making Port Adelaide their home. So we've just got to continue to make sure that we're doing everything we can to create a great environment that allows people to be their absolute best, both on and off the field.”
Richardson on working through the possible deal
“Our list management team will be working through that. As I said, they've had probably 18 months to prepare for it, so they're very well prepared. And there's a fair bit to go yet. But we're confident we'll get a great outcome.”
