Richmond’s Head of Player Personnel and List Management Blair Hartley has revealed how the changing face of AFL player trading, resulted in the Tigers acquiring quality mature-age midfielder Josh Caddy from Geelong during the October trade period.

Caddy initially was linked to Richmond, when the Cats expressed interest in securing the services of star Tiger veteran Brett Deledio.

Although that deal never eventuated, with Deledio subsequently joining GWS, Caddy ultimately found his way to Tigerland via a late trade.

“The market’s different now.  It used to be you’d have a list of the guys that were out of contract, you’d target those and talk to their managers, making sure that you were on the pulse in terms of players moving,” Hartley said on the Club’s official podcast ‘Talking Tigers’. 

“But now, with the free agency market and players looking to move prior to free agency . . . you need to be across everyone. 

“We’ll rate players on every club’s list three times a year, so that emotion’s taken out of it at the end of the year . . .

“Even leading into the trade period, we probably weren’t thinking that Josh was a player that would be leaving Geelong, given he was contracted to 2018.

“But just through the process of Brett Deledio looking at Geelong, as an option for him, we needed to assess our options and what would be best for us in terms of a suitable trade . . .

“He (Caddy) was one of the names we mentioned to Geelong through the trade period, and it just so happened that after the Deledio trade (to Geelong) fell through, he was still keen to get to Richmond and we were able to do the deal on the last day of trade . . .

“Those sort of things you need to prepare for . . . You need to assess all the players across all the clubs throughout the course of the year, so if these things to pop up you need to nail it.”