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Live sport on SN this weekendCornes believes star will “100% request a trade” as King names his biggest pre-agent of 2025
Lachlan Geleit • February 18th, 2025 9:08 am
David King has labelled Port Adelaide’s Zak Butters as 2025’s biggest pre-agent.
While Butters doesn’t become a free agent until the end of the 2026 season, clubs tend to get working on re-signing their stars and poaching targets from other clubs at least 12 months before decision time.
Other pre-agents this season include Zac Bailey, Ben King and Dylan Moore, and King believes that Butters is the biggest fish of the lot with offers from his home state of Victoria no doubt set to come thick and fast this year.
“Players a year from coming out of contract, we call them pre-agents,” King said on SEN Breakfast.
“I think the biggest pre-agent this year will be Zak Butters. The offers will be coming thick and fast for him, and Port will be making decisions here like, ‘Do we hang on? What do we do here? Do we give him the big deal?’.
“The money that will come at a player like Zak Butters will just be ridiculous.”
Another player whose name has been touted in a potential off-season move is Melbourne’s Kysaiah Pickett with the small forward linked to Fremantle.
King’s SEN Breakfast co-host Kane Cornes is almost certain that the 23-year-old will be lining up in purple come Round 1, 2026, despite being contracted with the Dees until 2027.
“Kozzie is gone, he is as gone as you could be,” Cornes said.
“That’s unless Melbourne does something that not many clubs are willing to do, and that is hold him to his contract and more clubs should do it.
“But unless that happens, and it's rare for it to happen, he is gone, he will 100 per cent request a trade … and I would think (to) Fremantle.”
