Richmond has stormed into the Zak Butters sweepstakes with a contract so big it would rewrite the financial history of the AFL.
A deal worth around $16 million over at least eight years. Close to $2 million a season. Front-loaded. Aggressive. And designed to blow every rival out of the water.
This is not a subtle entry into the league’s biggest free agency race. It’s a declaration.
Tigers load the cannon
For months, the narrative around Butters’ future has circled two clubs: the Western Bulldogs and Geelong. Both have been seen as the frontrunners, both appealing to the Port Adelaide star’s desire to be closer to his family in Melbourne’s west as much as to his bank balance.
Geelong chief executive Steve Hocking didn’t bother playing coy when asked about the Cats’ interest on 3AW last weekend.
“Happy to acknowledge we are one of a host of clubs that would have an interest in a player of that level,” he said.
But Richmond has changed the temperature of the room.
AFL Media reports the Tigers have been quietly banking salary cap space across the 2025 and 2026 seasons, a luxury afforded by a young list and a reset list profile. That war chest allows them to front-load an offer that could dwarf anything their competitors can realistically table.
The numbers are stark. The salary cap has surged from $10.4 million in 2016 to a projected $18.3 million in 2026. In that landscape, a $2 million salary in 2026 consumes roughly the same slice of a club’s Total Player Payments as a $1.13 million salary did a decade earlier.
So while the raw figure sounds outrageous, proportionally it’s closer to the going rate for a genuine A-grade match-winner in a booming market.
Richmond’s pitch would sit at the very top of that market. If signed, it would be the largest contract in AFL history.
For context, Dustin Martin’s famous decision at the end of 2017 came with a $1.5 million-a-year offer from North Melbourne on the table. He turned it down to stay at Punt Road for about $1.3 million a season. That was the benchmark then.
The benchmark is about to move.
Family, flags and a captain’s plea
The money is one thing. But this race has always been about more than that.
Butters has never hidden the pull of home and family, or his obsession with winning.
“Everyone here wants to win premierships, everyone at every other club wants to win premierships as well. No matter where I am, I want to win and I loved playing with that team today (against Essendon in Round 2). Family’s important as well, it’s been important to me for a long time,” he told the ABC recently.
“My mum and dad are over this weekend so it’s good to see them. It’s obviously a big decision but I’m not going to make it any time soon.”
That timeline will worry Port Adelaide fans, because the list of suitors is growing, not shrinking.
The Bulldogs and Cats remain firmly in the hunt. Hawthorn and Collingwood are also believed to have interest, circling a 23-year-old match-winner whose best years are still in front of him.
Inside Port Adelaide, the campaign to keep him has already begun.
On AFL 360 on Tuesday night, Power captain Connor Rozee revealed he has been quietly lobbying his close friend, even if Butters is playing his cards tight.
“I’ve spoken with him,” Rozee said on Fox Footy. “All that we can do as a football club is put ourselves in a position where he wants to be here. I know he’s got some of his best mates (here), we’ve grown together, we’ve been together for eight years now, myself and a bunch of other guys.
“It’s a really tough decision. We’ve had people come and go from our football club; it’s part of the game now.
“We’re going to have these conversations throughout the whole year … he doesn’t give me much (when I ask him to stay), I know that he’s fully invested in this season, and that’s all I care about.
“That’ll take its own course at the end of the year … we’ll wait and see.”
Port’s pitch is about connection, continuity and contention. Richmond’s is about history, money and a new era. The Victorian contenders are selling home and a shot at building something of their own.
The pressure will only intensify as the season rolls on.
The Hawk, the beach and a rule book twist
While the league’s biggest clubs posture over Butters, another ruckman has already made his call — and he did it from a beach in Mexico with the help of a rule change.
Ned Reeves, once on the fringe at Hawthorn and fighting just to get a game, has turned away two of the AFL’s most powerful Victorian clubs to commit long-term to the Hawks.
The 27-year-old, who had managed only five senior games across the previous two seasons, re-signed late last year through to the end of 2029. That decision came despite serious interest from Carlton and Collingwood.
Midweek Tackle’s Jon Ralph detailed the turning points in Reeves’ resurgence on Fox Footy on Tuesday night.
“Carlton and Collingwood came at Reeves really hard,” Ralph said.
“Sam Mitchell came to him late last year and said ‘Ned, I want you’ … (Reeves said) ‘I needed that, because he hadn’t played me for two years’, but he (Mitchell) believed in him.”
That vote of confidence from his coach lit the spark. The rule makers poured on the fuel.
“And then he’s sitting at a beach in Mexico, and he looks at his phone, and the ruck rules have changed. All of a sudden, (the rules are) incentivising the jumpers, the leapers — not the wrestlers and the grapplers.
“He said to his teammates ‘I think I might be a chance again, lads’, and the rest is history’.”
The tweak to ruck contests has tilted the game back towards the tall, spring-heeled types rather than the hulking wrestlers. For Reeves, a 210cm leaper, it turned a career crossroads into a clear path.
Carlton and Collingwood came hard. Hawthorn’s faith, and the law book, came harder.
Reeves chose the brown and gold.
As the season unfolds, one ruckman’s future is locked in until 2029 thanks to a rule change and a coach’s belief. Another star’s next move sits at the centre of a $16 million tug-of-war that could reshape the competition’s balance of power for years.
