Former GWS coach Leon Cameron admits he “absolutely” thought Lance Franklin was set to join the Giants back in late 2013.
In a move which has since become folklore, Franklin departed Hawthorn to join Sydney on a mammoth nine-year, $10 million deal.
It was widely expected that ‘Buddy’ would shift to the Giants before he threw a late curveball which caught many off guard, including Cameron.
Gerard Whateley asked Cameron if he believed Franklin was set to join the Giants prior to the 2014 season.
“Absolutely,” he said on SEN’s Crunch Time.
“I met with him a couple of times, but to his credit he never said that, ‘I’m coming to your footy club, I’m looking to move’.
“Clearly, when it got to that real pointy end and then the bombshell hit that he was moving to Sydney but wasn’t to the Giants.
“It was a big shock.
“I coached him the year before at Hawthorn so had that relationship, but then the best-kept secret in town, he then made that decision to go to the Swans.”
Cameron was asked if Franklin, to his understanding, was ever coming to GWS or if it was as CEO Dave Matthews so eloquently put it - “We’ve been led down the garden path”.
“I suppose the only person who can answer that is Lance,” Cameron added.
“We thought that we were in the box seat to get him, everyone knew that and we weren’t hiding away from that.
“Everyone probably took their eye off the ball and forgot the Swans.
“But he’s the only one that can probably answer that. Did he change his mind halfway through or towards the back end?
“I think that clearly if you look back at history, he probably intended to go to the Swans from the very start and just had to find a way to massage his way through until that decision had to be made.”
Despite GWS’ interest, Franklin went the other direction in Sydney and the rest, as they say, is history.