Mark Duffield: Could West Coast take advantage of haggling over Shai Bolton’s trade to Fremantle?

Fremantle has picks 9, 10 and 16 at this year’s national draft.

The Dockers might even have been prepared to offer all of those picks for Bolton and teammate Liam Baker — who has since nominated West Coast as his club of choice immediately following the appointment of Andrew McQualter as the senior coach on Monday.

While formal trade discussions are yet to kick off the early indications are that Fremantle will put one of their top-10 picks on the table for Bolton along with pick 16.

And Richmond’s response to that — initially at least — is likely to be that they want the two top 10 picks.

Normally two first round-picks — even 10 and 16 — would be plenty for a small forward like Bolton — who kicked 34 goals in 2024.

But Bolton has four years of a lucrative contract still to run and Richmond have publicly declared they are happy to keep him at the club if they don’t get the deal they want.

And normally a club like Fremantle, which needs an X-factor forward to fill the gap left by an ageing Michael Walters — would eventually offer up the picks that get the deal done even if it means paying significant overs.

But holding one top-10 pick in the bank may prove significant for them because it would put the Dockers in the frame to draft Peel Thunder talent and WA 18s captain Bo Allan.

Allan is the standout local in WA this year.

While Hamish Davis has climbed the draft pecking order after making a significant impact for Claremont’s seniors in WAFL finals, Allan is the only WA player thought to be in top 30 reckoning at the National Draft.

Allan will hold an added attraction for the Dockers because he has played at Fremantle’s WAFL alignment club Peel Thunder and two weeks ago was a member of their WAFL senior premiership team.

At 191cm and 84kg he not only already has the big body that would see him close to being ready to play AFL football in 2025, but he also has a good understanding of the Fremantle playing style after 11 senior appearances for Peel this year.

He split his time between the Peel seniors and state 18s, playing only twice in the Colts team. He played in two of Peel’s finals — missing the Qualifying final and First semi final with a quad strain.

The appointment of McQualter as West Coast coach will make the Bolton negotiation a delicate one for the Dockers.

The haste with which Baker’s trade request and indications that Jack Graham would seek to join the Eagles followed the announcement on Monday pointed to McQualter’s strong relationship with Richmond players.

West Coast’s list manager Matt Clark also worked at the Tigers.

Neither McQualter nor CEO Don Pyke this week ruled out making a play for Bolton.

“That is all part of the mix now. I haven’t caught up with our list manager with regards to how we are sitting around the two in Liam and Jack,” Pyke told SEN.

“We will weigh up what that looks like in terms of in terms of our draft capital and how that plays. It is probably too early to say because there is a lot of water to go under the bridge before we finalise deals.”

The Eagles hold pick three in the draft and pick 23 — with the likelihood also of claiming pick 13 after Tom Barrass is traded to Hawthorn.

It has been widely assumed that pick 13 would be the pick in the Baker trade but if pick 23 came into play the Eagles could theoretically look at splitting their pick three into two first round picks to have a crack at Bolton.

Pyke said the club’s trade and draft strategy was heavily contingent in still holding enough draft capital to bring in young talent, but he also spoke of getting “the best of both worlds”.

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“We have been really consistent on this. We want to go into the draft with a good enough hand to bring in young talent because we understand where we are, we need to continue to add young talent,” he said.

“If opportunities present with free agency and trade we want to do them but we want to get the balance right where we are not giving away the farm for people and we are making sure that we have still got enough picks.”

“If we had opportunity to bring in guys in that 23-to-27 year bracket where we don’t have a lot of depth in those areas then we will look to do it but we have got to weigh up the currency we have got and how we play it to get the best of both worlds.”