Collingwood football manager Graham Wright says the Magpies won’t trade Ollie Henry to Geelong unless the Cats up their offer for the 20-year-old.
As things stand, Wright says the Cats have offered just pick 25 in this year’s draft for the talented youngster, a deal the Magpies “won’t accept”.
Wright says the Magpies are “really reluctant” to trade Henry unless the price is right given his status as a first-round pick with two years of AFL development behind him.
“We were really clear from the start that we didn’t want Ollie to go, we wanted to retain him, he was pick 17 a couple of years ago and has played 24 games across that in his first two years,” Wright said on AFL Trade Radio.
“We feel like we’ve put a lot of development into Ollie, and we’ve got really high hopes of him going forward, so we were really reluctant to entertain a trade and it had to be at a certain level for us to consider it to be honest.
“We were really clear to Ollie, his management and Geelong about it and at this stage, we’re no further advanced than we were last Friday when they offered us pick 25 which we won’t accept.”
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While Wright understands that Henry is keen to get home to Geelong and play with his brother Jack, he believes a trade is “unlikely” as Collingwood hopes to convince the forward to extend with the club if a deal doesn’t go through.
“Yeah, absolutely, we’d love Ollie to stay,” Wright said.
“We’ve been really clear with Ollie and his management around that.
“There’s a pull down the highway, we understand that, but it’s only 40 or 50 minutes up the road.
“We’d hope that if a trade couldn’t be secured – and it’s probably unlikely – that Ollie would stay with us and we can work something out with him.”
Henry kicked 21 goals from 15 games in 2022, booting multiple majors on seven occasions.