Gold Coast CEO Tony Cochrane has opened up on young star Izak Rankine's decision to request a trade to Adelaide, admitting that it was "disappointing" to see him go.
Cochrane lamented the loss of the 22-year-old, whom he labelled an "investment" to the club while speaking on Sportsday, conceding that the nature of modern day football involves who has the bigger wallet.
Rankine has played 48 games for the Suns since being drafted with pick 3 in the 2018 national draft, debuting in Round 6 of 2020 after hamstring and hip issues left him sidelined for much of the 2019 season.
With the Suns sticking by their young gun during his interrupted first year at the club, Cochrane admitted that he felt like the small forward "owed the club".
“Incredibly disappointing because there are so many people around our club that gave Izak a hell of a lot of time,” Cochrane said on Sportsday
“I recall his first year they discovered he had a bit of an arthritic hip issue and the time and trouble we went to trying to get to the bottom of that and to get him sorted for life – not just for footy – and he didn’t play in that first year.
“It goes right back to those days. Stuart Dew has put in a phenomenal amount of time with this kid. Stuart’s been like a second dad to him, he’s helped him in so many ways to get around him and he’s also helped him enormously with his football.
“There’s a lot of very disappointed people up here and I know a lot of his teammates all feel that they are all in this together and felt that he was in this with them … money talks, huh.
“I do (feel like he owed the club). When you put the investment in with a young lad who is 18, he’s unfortunately fit to play in the first year, you give him a whole year to help get him right, you put a lot of work into him, turn him into an AFL footballer and great credit to Stuart Dew.
“It’s disappointing when that happens, but it’s sport all over the world now. Somebody else with a bigger wallet comes along and makes it pretty hard.”
The Suns have been no stranger to losing big name stars throughout their short history, with club captains Tom Lynch and Steven May both departing the club at the conclusion of the 2018 season.
With Rankine set to head to Adelaide come the official trade period, Cochrane admitted that his time in the chairman role may be coming to an end.
First joining the Gold Coast board in 2014, Cochrane stepped into the chairman role in 2016, now conceding that he was thinking about stepping down in the near future.
“I am a fair bit warn out. It’s been a fairly big job and it’s taken up a lot more hours and it’s an honourary job so it takes up a chunk of hours out of your working life," Cochrane said.
“So yeah, I’m starting to think that maybe it’s a good thing for Tony Cochrane to think about stepping down in the near future and letting somebody else have a go and there will probably be a lot of people I suspect in the media very happy to see my arse walk out the door.”
