Western Bulldogs list boss Sam Power is confident the club’s salary cap is ideally positioned to retain all their high-profile free agents and out-of-contract stars this year.
Bailey Dale, Caleb Daniel, Josh Dunkley, Tim English, Alex Keath, Jack Macrae, Bailey Smith and Jason Johannisen headline the 22 Bulldogs without a contract beyond the 2022 season.
New vice-captain and star free agent Macrae said this week he wanted to “retire as a Western Bulldogs player” in a positive sign for Power’s onerous task to re-sign the triple All-Australian.
English (Western Australia) and Daniel (South Australia) grew up interstate and Dunkley wanted to be traded to Essendon two years ago, so it may not be a straightforward exercise.
Dale transformed from a fringe forward to an All-Australian halfback last year, Norm Smith medallist Johannisen was recast as a forward and ex-Crow Keath is the Dogs’ No.1 key defender.
Emerging midfielder Smith, 21, might be the top priority of the bunch, given the excellent start to his career and immense off-field popularity he has generated.
That collection of star power coming out of contract at the same time has cost clubs previously, but Power told Western Bulldogs members in a Q&A video that their list strategy was geared towards this scenario.
“When we think the group of players is going to be in a certain window where they’re challenging for a premiership, you’re really aligning your TPP (total player payments) closely to that,” Power said.
“We feel that the playing group is in that window, so we’ve had a really clear strategy and we’ve aligned our TPP to that over a period of time now.
“That gives us really good confidence that we’ll be able to retain our key players.
“We have clearly got a lot of players out of contract this year, but there are discussions ongoing with a lot of those players at the moment.
“We’re really confident at this stage that we’ll be able to retain those players and keep this group together.
“We feel they’re in a really good place in terms of their development and hopefully what they can achieve over the next period of time.”
Power dodged a question around which of the out-of-contract crew was his highest-priority signing, saying he deemed that top-tier crop as “pretty critical” in totality.
“There are some good players coming out of contract, but it’s not uncommon across the competition for a lot of players to be coming out in any given year and we’re no different to that,” he said.
“I think from a club perspective, it allows clubs to maintain flexibility. It also helps from a salary cap management point of view.
“In terms of ouxjmtzywr guys, there are clearly six or seven priorities and we want to retain every single one.”
THE BULLDOGS' OUT-OF-CONTRACT CREW
