Clarke learns the Collingwood way

Australian Rules NewsCollingwood football club's football operations manager, Neil Balme, has confirmed that young Down football star Martin Clarke is currently in training with the Melbourne club.

The eighteen-year-old, widely regarded as one of Gaelic football's brightest lights, arrived in Melbourne earlier this week but Balme dismissed suggestions that Clarke is having a trial and that a deal to sign him had already been done.

Collingwood is unofficially the Manchester United of the Australian football league and in the past financial year the club spent more than any of its 15 rivals on player recruitment.

The club has never recruited in Ireland before, but player drafting regulations in Australia, which prevent the top clubs from signing each other's best players, encouraged them to follow in the footsteps of Sydney, Brisbane, and Carlton, by looking at Ireland for potential new recruits.

Balme confirmed that Clarke has been tracked for some time by the AFL giants but said that talk of him signing was premature.

"Its true that Martin Clarke has joined us for the next five weeks," Balme said.

"But we are a long way off from offering him a contract and he is not having a trial as such.

"Martin has to come to Collingwood for us to have a look at him and to see what he thinks about the possibility of playing Australian rules football.

"We have never recruited from Ireland before so we have set up a new training programme for Martin to see his skills and to show him some of the basics of our game.

"If Martin likes the set-up at Collingwood and is good enough we could sign him before he goes back to Ireland as an international rookie for next year, but he has to confirm whether he wants to join us first and there is no rush for him to do that. Ireland is across the other side of the world from Australia and Martin would have to consider family issues and whether he wants to give up playing Gaelic football at this stage of his career.

"It's too early and there are too many variables for us to say with any certainty that Martin will definitely be joining Collingwood but we will know more in the next few weeks."

If Clarke becomes a Collingwood player he would be only the fifth Irishman on the books of Aussie rules clubs. Sydney Swans star Tadhg Kennelly is one of the AFL's biggest stars, and the only Irishman to win an AFL Premiership, and the Cork duo Aisake and Setanta Ó'hÁilpín are continuing their development at Carlton.

Former Laois defender Colm Begley joined the Brisbane Lions last year while team-mate Brendan Quigely returned to Ireland before Christmas suffering from homesickness.