CARLTON remains confident star ruck Tom De Koning will ignore multi-million dollar free agency offers elsewhere and will commit his long-term future to the club.
De Koning enters the 2025 season as one of the competition’s most sought-after free agents, having exploded into contention among the League’s best young rucks following a stellar last season.
Carlton is unlikely to be able to match the financial sums being offered elsewhere for De Koning, though Blues coach Michael Voss declared himself confident in the club’s culture and direction being enough to sway the 25-year-old to stay.
“I am (confident),” Voss told AFL.com.au at Ikon Park this week.
“What our job is to do is to provide the best environment we possibly can for any player. You back it in. What I’ve seen, particularly over the last 12 months, is that Tom has really come on as a player.
Before that – and I’ve had these conversations with him – he was pretty inconsistent. He was good sometimes and not good at others. He’s been able to build that durability that you need, that resilience to be able to play ruck. It’s not as simple as being able to roll out there week after week and be involved in 90 contests. He’s been able to develop that over a period of time.
“But when you can look at a player and they look happy and they like where they are, I reckon it tells you a lot. He looks like that. He looks like a player playing with great energy, he looks like he’s playing really free.
“When the time comes where we need to have that conversation, we’ll have it. But I’ve been really impressed with his pre-season. He’s doubled down on a lot of areas he needed to work on in his game and he’s raring to go.”
