Didak, Kerr On The Radar - Roos

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday September 16, 2008

Michael Cowley

SYDNEY coach Paul Roos says his club will "certainly" consider chasing either West Coast's Daniel Kerr or Collingwood's problem child Alan Didak, but only when told by their clubs that they are available for trade.

While the pair have already been mentioned as possible targets for Sydney, Kerr and Didak are under contract with their clubs for next season.

Kerr has been trying to stitch up a long-term deal with the Eagles, while Didak's latest drama came when he and teammate Heath Shaw were suspended by the club in August after lying about Didak's involvement in a drunken car crash for which Shaw was charged.

There is much conjecture about whether they will be at those clubs next year.

Roos said of Kerr: "I think if he was available ... but out of respect to West Coast, he's a contracted player, and until we hear differently ... If they [West Coast] were to say they weren't interested in keeping him or wanted to trade him or whatever, we'd certainly look at him ... we're not hearing anything other than he is contracted for next year.

"Alan is probably similar. He is contracted to Collingwood, but if Alan became available, would we talk to Collingwood about him? Yeah, we probably would, we'd talk amongst ourselves first but he's another quality player."

Asked if one of those players could help lift them to a level closer to the likes of Geelong and Hawthorn, Roos replied: "A top-shelf player makes a big difference. If you are able to get a quality player from another club it does make you a different football team. They are the decisions you have to weigh up and determine as a footy club."

One player who has been tipped to join the Swans and replace retiring ruckman Peter Everitt is Melbourne big man Jeff White. But Roos rejected that claim yesterday, stating his club would go with first-choice ruckman Darren Jolly, and a pair of youngsters in Daniel Currie and Jake Orreal.

"I think Jeff still has something to offer AFL footy, to be honest, but I think from our point of view probably not," Roos said. "We've got Daniel Currie who is a young ruckman coming up, and Jake Orreal, so probably not is my initial reaction, with no disrespect to Jeff."

Roos said he would meet with his players this week to do their season assessments, then discuss with the match committee what moves they would make and what direction they would take.

He noted that most of the older players were contracted for next year, with co-captain Leo Barry who is not, under some scrutiny.

"I'm not sure," Roos said of Barry's future. "I thought he finished off the year really well. We've got to assess our whole list, where we are going, what we think we can do next year and hopefully we can make a rational decision at some point. We'll talk about Leo during the course of the week but we haven't really discussed it at this stage."

Barry also had a charge of striking Western Bulldogs forward Shaun Higgins in Friday's game dropped by the match review panel while St Kilda key forward Justin Koschitzke can play in Saturday night's AFL preliminary final against Hawthorn after he had a rough conduct charge dropped.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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