Ian Collins

And you'll see there's a degree of espionage that's involved in how this all works.

Now, the first inklings, 1990, Ian Collins is the boss of Carlton.

always always a proponent for the national competition always talking to everyone about how we can get this national competition up as we've spoken about previously he's over in south australia having a chat with norwood who are just asking for some advice that if they went down this path what would it what would it mean so there's little these little conversations by the the big clubs that are worried about the snf sa nfl's future are happening Now, it all happens to blow up, though, on July 4 or July 5.

There's some difference about what date happens.

Thank you.

Years ago on the radio, there was a great interview with Ian Collins, I think, when he was looking after Carlton after all the fiascos.

And they were an in-depth interview, and he brought up the subject of this trade issue that's going on now back in his day.

And he mentioned that in his day, the salary cap didn't include interstate players.

So a lot of clubs like Carlton relied heavily on South Australia, etc., and their salary didn't go into the cap.

Well, it did.

Well, it didn't, according to Ian Collins.

How long ago? We're talking probably 70s, early 80s.

And then you would have swapped over to Wolsey, so 85, 86, 87?

Yeah, and I played a bit of under-19s in reserves for the first two years of the night games, and then I played in the league team in 85, it was my first full year, and then, yeah, Parco got the sack at the end of that year, and Wolsey took over for a couple of seasons, and then I ended up, my last year at Carlton, I had a stress fracture in my foot, so I only played half a dozen games, and I ended up getting traded to in fact I think I was nearly the last player ever to have a transfer fee paid for him because I played round one with Carlton and then Ian Collins called me in his office just before round one actually three or four of us and said there's this new Fandek thing called the salary cap that we're probably going to have to start taking a bit of notice of and we're going to have to clear a couple of players out of the club to get under the salary cap so as it turns out it was Wayne Harms and Des English and Peter McConville I think but I was the only one who left and believe me, my salary wouldn't have made a huge difference.

And Melbourne, you enjoyed it there, played over 100 games?

Yeah, Melbourne was probably, I mean, Melbourne's probably where I had the most success and had the best times in footy.