{"id":328891,"date":"2023-09-06T08:14:34","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T08:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=328891"},"modified":"2023-09-06T21:01:50","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T21:01:50","slug":"last-ditch-plea-fails-as-high-value-cat-pushes-for-port-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=328891","title":{"rendered":"Last-ditch plea fails as 'high value' Cat pushes for Port trade"},"content":{"rendered":"

G\ufeffeelong<\/a> big man Esava Ratugolea<\/a> looks set to join Port Adelaide<\/a>, a year after the Cats shut down the possibility of the trade.<\/p>\n

The Age<\/a> reported the 25-year-old has formally requested a trade to the Power\ufeff, with a five-year deal likely on the table.<\/p>\n

Despite now being out of contract with Geelong, the Cats will play hard ball, likely aiming for the Power's first round pick in exchange for Ratugolea.<\/p>\n

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It comes after Geelong coach Chris Scott recently stressed Ratugolea's importance to the Cats' structure going forward, and his desire to retain his services for "the rest of his career".<\/p>\n

"I don't make list management calls \u2013 I'm involved in them \u2013 and I've been really clear how highly I rate Esava," Scott said in late August.<\/p>\n

\"Esava<\/p>\n

"I'm looking forward to him playing out the rest of his career at the Cats.<\/p>\n

"He's a very valuable player and I think he's only just started to show the type of player he can be, so I'll be fighting very, very hard to keep him at the Cats. <\/p>\n

"It is a competition; you just don't give those guys away, they're very high value."<\/p>\n

Ratugolea was drafted to Geelong at pick 43 in 2016, spending the first part of his career plying his trade in the forward line.<\/p>\n

After suffering a broken leg\ufeff in during a match in 2018 when he was just 19-years-old<\/a>, he struggled to regain his spot at the senior level in a ruck-forward role, until Geelong made the decision to move him into the backline.<\/p>\n

In 2023, the key defender notched up 16 games, with an average of 8.9 disposals and 2.8 intercept marks, coming in second behind premiership defender and five-time All-Australian Tom Stewart. \ufeff<\/p>\n

The AFL Trade period officially begins on Monday October 9 and closes on\ufeff Wednesday October 18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

G\ufeffeelong big man Esava Ratugolea looks set to join Port Adelaide, a year after the Cats shut down the possibility of the trade. The Age […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":327676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328891"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=328891"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":328893,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328891\/revisions\/328893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/327676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=328891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=328891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=328891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}