PORT ADELAIDE football boss Chris Davies is confident the club will be able to complete a trade for Essendon forward Orazio Fantasia to follow its acquisition of Sydney backman Aliir Aliir.
Port secured Aliir’s services for a future second-round draft pick on Wednesday morning.
The 26-year-old has played 64 AFL games for the Swans since being drafted with pick 44 in the 2013 draft from East Perth, and Davies and his colleagues like the fact he can play both as a key defender or in the ruck.
Fantasia has made it clear he wants to return home to South Australia and has requested a trade to Port Adelaide, and speaking on AFL Trade Radio on Wednesday, Davies said the club would work to get a deal done.
“We’re not going to walk away from Orazio,” he said.
“He’s told us he wants to come to Port Adelaide. We’ve got a responsibility to try and get things done because that’s the type of club that we’ve been.
“We’ve been the type of club that if a player says he wants to come, we’ve done our best to work to get him to us, but at the same time, there’s a limit and we’re probably at that limit now.”
Davies said the club continued to work with Essendon list manager Adrian Dodoro on how a potential trade could be reached.
But he said the club had limited draft capital to offer this year and was not looking to trade any of its players.
“We agreed on what things we thought that we could give to Essendon at the start of the trade period,” Davies explained.
“We’ve offered those up. Where things go from here are going to be largely in Adrian’s court.”
Fantasia has completed a check-up with Port Adelaide’s medical team.
Despite being restricted to just five games in 2020 because of injury, Davies said there was no reason for the club not to offer the talented forward a contract.
“Nothing that our medical team thought that was large enough for us not to put a contract in front of him,” he said.
“Our medical guys, I think over the last ten years rolling have had the least number of soft tissue injuries in the competition.
“We put a lot of faith in our medical staff to be able to get players right.
“If Orazio was to come to the club then hopefully we could get him fit with those people looking at him but there was nothing there that suggested we shouldn’t pursue him if he was available.”
Davies would not reveal the length or value of any potential contract offer to Fantasia but said it appeared the 25-year-old was not motivated by money.
“His first question before we actually spoke about anything to do with what a deal might look like was the fact he wanted to come home to Adelaide so that’s his primary motivator, it hasn’t been about money for him,” he explained.
“But we’re not anywhere closer and the last 48 hours, Essendon have got a lot going on. I think they’re prioritising what’s coming into their club rather than what’s going out.”
The trade period ends at 7pm ACDT on Thursday evening.
