\n The future of Zak Butters was a hot topic on the opening day of trade period\n <\/p>\n
Zak Butters before Port Adelaide’s clash with Carlton in round 23, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
PORT Adelaide has denied Zak Butters floated the idea of a trade as Geelong and the Western Bulldogs both confirmed they would be interested in the star midfielder.<\/p>\n
Butters has one year to run on his contract at the Power and will be a free agent at the end of 2026.<\/p>\n
Power list boss Jason Cripps on Monday said vice-captain Butters will “100 per cent” be at Port Adelaide next season, and hopefully well into the future.<\/p>\n
“We want Zak to be at the club for the next 10 years, and that will be our sole focus at the right time,” Cripps said.<\/p>\n
“Zak’s really happy, 100 per cent committed to the club and a super important player for our future.”<\/p>\n
Cripps denied Port’s three-time best-and-fairest winner had raised the prospect of a move to a Victorian club.<\/p>\n
“Zak has never broached the idea of being traded,” Cripps said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had ongoing discussions with Zak and his management group … as we do with all our players, in particular our interstate players, over the journey.<\/p>\n
“We’ll continue to have those discussions with those players, but as I said, Zak is 100 per cent committed and happy at the club.”<\/p>\n
Butters grew up a Dogs supporter in Melbourne’s western suburbs.<\/p>\n
“You do take that extra interest and admire what he’s been able to do,” Bulldogs men’s football manager Sam Power said.<\/p>\n
“If Zak had a wish to return to Victoria I think he’d have every Victorian club looking at that.<\/p>\n
“But at this stage he’s contracted and we haven’t heard anything different to that.”<\/p>\n
Geelong football manager Andrew Mackie is keeping “really close tabs” on Butters.<\/p>\n
“He’s a gun. We’d love him (but) so would 17 other clubs, including Port Adelaide,” Mackie said.<\/p>\n
“So as far as we’re concerned he’s a contracted player, and we haven’t spent too much time on it, other than admiring his football from where we sit.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The future of Zak Butters was a hot topic on the opening day of trade period Zak Butters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,83,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-193869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-text","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}