Prized Fremantle recruit Luke Jackson’s performance in Round 3 will be scrutinised under a microscope after a poor start to the season in his new colours.
The 21-year-old ruckman was traded to Fremantle at the end of last year on a seven-year multi-million-dollar deal.
But Jackson was the talk of the town for all the wrong reasons in the west this week after he was heavily scrutinised on the back page of The West Australian newspaper.
While some fans and experts were critical of how harsh the criticism of Jackson was, SEN’s Gerard Whateley believes that if you sign a multi-million-dollar contract, you can’t be surprised when the critics swarm.
“This is the price of offering the contract. If you do take the million dollars way ahead of time this is what you subject yourself to,” Whateley said on SEN’s Crunch Time.
“We said this in real time. If you skip the steps and go straight to the A-grade contract, you better be ready to perform against that.
“So there’s discomfort around that level of scrutiny on the back page of the paper. No, Fremantle have gone chips in on him.
“Now they might say it’s for six years down the track, he has taken the money and the contract now and you have to be eyes wide open, it doesn’t matter whether it’s fair or not. This is what it looks like if you choose to take it and so you become the beacon for it,” Whateley said.
Four-time premiership Hawk Luke Hodge argued that it would be hard for a young player to knock back a long-term contract worth a lot of money. But Whateley pushed that both the club and player should have been aware that this level of scrutiny was bound to come if both Freo and Jackson started the year poorly.
“It’s the responsibility of the club who did it. And if you choose to take it (the contract) someone has to sit you down and say 'hey, hey, hey, by the way, what comes with this is if you have two poor games at the start this is what it will look like, are you ready for it'?
"As long as you’re ready for it no dramas, but don’t have people complaining that this is grossly unfair.”
Although Jackson has had a tough start to the season, in his first 54 matches he has already won a premiership medal and the 2021 NAB Rising Star Award.