AFL.com.au’s Gettable Draft Countdown last week<\/a> that the versatile defender would turn his attention to his contract decision next year.<\/p>\n“Josh is still contracted for another year at Hawthorn, we’re still a long way out from the 2026 season. The Hawthorn Footy Club has been unbelievable for Josh, they traded up on this night three years ago to get him and it’s been pretty awesome to see his career develop,” Hodge said.<\/p>\n
“The Hawthorn Football Club has been fantastic for Josh, Josh has been fantastic for the footy club as well. He’s contracted and we’ll let him get in. He’s just got back from overseas and he starts training on Monday and he’ll hit the ground running and pick up his footy and worry about that. We’ll pick up the contract stuff once we get to the new year.”<\/p>\n
Zeke Uwland and player agent Dylan Hodge on Gettable Draft Countdown. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
Weddle has played 60 games across his three seasons with the Hawks, with the Bombers’ early bid for him coming after Hawthorn’s pursuit of Bombers champion Zach Merrett in the trade period.<\/p>\n
Hodge said the “forward” nature of the list management landscape was becoming more prevalent as he described informing Weddle about the rival interest.<\/p>\n
“I had to call him in Europe and make sure this doesn’t mean he gets to go and spend all his money. Josh and his parents were onto that straight away,” Hodge joked.<\/p>\n
“It’s all exciting. I think it’s a good thing where the industry’s going that this is openly spoken about now; it happens at a lot of clubs, clubs are very forward and everyone in the industry enjoys talking about it. He’s going to be an exciting talent to watch.”<\/p>\n
Essendon list boss Matt Rosa said the Bombers were taking an aggressive approach to luring players to the club.<\/p>\n
“It’s a really important piece of putting a list together, is bringing in mature talent. We’ll always target A-grade talent and then those role specifics – which we feel we’ve been able to do with Brayden Fiorini this year – bringing in a player who knows what it takes and can play consistent AFL footy and is a great character as well,” Rosa told Gettable Draft Countdown last week.<\/p>\n
“We will look to be aggressive and hopefully we can capitalise on some opportunities.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Weddle will wait until 2026 to make a call on his playing future Josh Weddle celebrates during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,85,83],"class_list":["post-304575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304575","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=304575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}