As Lachie Whitfield prepares to play his 250th AFL game this weekend, Melbourne great Garry Lyon has revealed just how close the Demons came to landing the future Giants star, thanks to a bold pitch, a cheeky napkin, and a touch of wishful thinking.
Back in 2010, Lyon coached a young Whitfield in the Vic Country Under-16s academy and saw firsthand the elite talent developing in Mount Martha.
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With Whitfield already tipped as the No.1 draft pick, Lyon and the Demons, holding pick 4, knew their only chance was to convince him not to nominate for GWS.
“I said to someone at Melbourne that this is the kid we’ve got to try and get,” Lyon said on SEN’s The Rabbit Hole podcast.
“They knew I had a relationship with him, so we went down to Mount Martha. They entertained us in their house, and we sat there and said, ‘Don’t nominate for the Giants, come to the Demons’.
“The pitch was to try and have him say, ‘No, I’m not going’, which didn’t work out obviously as he ended up going to the Giants.”
The napkin 'contract' that never held up
Lyon also recalled bumping into Whitfield again during the Footy Show’s Grand Final edition a few years later, this time convincing him to scribble a mock commitment to Melbourne on a pub napkin.
“I did get him to sign a piece of paper saying that when his contract is finished at the Giants to come and play at Melbourne,” Lyon laughed. “I’ve still got it somewhere, and in all good conscience, I couldn’t keep him to it.”
Whitfield remembers it too.
“I remember it, it was in the corner at the pub!” he told SEN Breakfast. “I was coerced by him after too many beers. And napkins aren’t legal (as a contract).”
Now 30, Whitfield joins an elite group of Giants players to reach 250 games, with only Callan Ward (267) and Toby Greene (set for 255) having played more in club history.