Jordan De Goey has not yet re-signed with Collingwood, but his management will begin discussions with the Magpies in coming weeks.
De Goeys manager moved to quash speculation that his client had already signed with Collingwood.
Jordan de Goey had another outstanding performance on the Queen's Birthday, notching 30 disposals.
Photo: Wayne Ludbey
The uncontracted midfielder-forward fuelled contract speculation after the Queen's Birthday match against Melbourne when he appeared to indicate in a TV interview that he'd either recommitted or was poised to do so.
"Rumours of him signing are untrue," his manager Ben Niall said.
"There has been no discussions, no meetings, no offer yet, but that is as it was always planned to be. We always planned to wait until mid-year to get together and talk, and that is what we will do in the next few weeks."
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Niall and Collingwood agreed to wait until mid-year when the club could ascertain if training and other changes they introduced for de Goey after a second club pre-season suspension had been meaningful.
The player agreed and wanted to get back to playing good football and prove himself.
Having played hard with de Goey in a disciplinary sense, Collingwood is now reaping the reward on the field with improved performance. That improved performance has also significantly raised his market value.
Since his return to football, de Goey has elevated himself in his fourth season to be one of the new stars of the competition. He has kicked bags of five and six goals as a forward, and on the Queen's Birthday was influential with a damaging 30-possession game in the midfield.
Establishing his financial value as a player is more difficult now with clubs such as St Kilda and North Melbourne sounding out Niall with discussions of long-term, big-money deals. But suffice to say, all clubs will have expressed interest in the player they believe might be gettable given his pre-season suspension and unsigned status.
Collingwood will be squeezed financially, with other big-name players Darcy Moore and Jamie Elliott both still out of contract.
Both have been injured this year but have drawn significant interest from rival clubs. Moore has had a contract offer with him for a long period, but talks are understood not to have started with Elliott's management yet, with the forward yet to play a game this season.
Defender Matthew Scharenberg is also out of contract but believed to be close to re-signing. The former No.6 draft pick, now in his sixth season, has finally emerged from a terrible run of injuries to prove himself as an influential intercept marking defender.
Michael Gleeson is a senior AFL football writer and Fairfax Media's athletics writer. He also covers tennis, cricket and other sports. He won the AFL Players Association Grant Hattam Trophy for excellence in journalism for the second time in 2014 and was a finalist in the 2014 Quill Awards for best sports feature writer. He was also a finalist in the 2014 Australian Sports Commission awards for his work on Boots for Kids. He is a winner of the AFL Media Association award for best news reporter and a two-time winner of Cricket Victorias cricket writer of the year award. Michael has covered multiple Olympics, Commonwealth Games and world championships and 15 seasons of AFL, He has also written seven books – five sports books and two true crime books.
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