Brownlow medallist Matt Priddis is not worried about fellow midfielder Scott Selwood leaving the Eagles’ nest any time soon.
The 24-year-old will become a restricted free agent at the end of next season, but Priddis says there’s little danger of his teammate returning to his home state of Victoria.
“He has actually just bought a nice house, so I think he will lose that bargaining power come contract time,” Priddis joked to 3AW on Tuesday night.
“And his girlfriend is moving over to Perth in the next couple of weeks.”
Selwood is one of five senior Eagles currently training with the rehab group and Priddis says they are making steady progress towards a mid-January return.
Priddis expects each of the injured Eagles in Selwood (ankle), Eric Mackenzie (hip), Matt Rosa (pectoral), Sharrod Wellingham (knee) and Elliot Yeo (hand) to have a big impact in the season ahead.
“Training standards will lift a bit once some of those mature guys really starting to get back into their full workload,” Priddis said.
“Those five guys are key for us if we’re going to have a successful year.
“The more competition we have on the training track, we’ll be pushing ourselves to get better and we need to get a lot better to really challenge those top sides.”
As the competition’s reigning best and fairest player, Priddis says he is feeling no added pressure to produce a repeat effort next year.
Instead, he will focus on playing his part for the team in a bid to return to finals action in 2015.
“I’ll just go out there looking to play my role,” Priddis said.
“I won’t try to do it any other way.
“I understand my strengths and weaknesses and I’ll just try to play them as best I can, so that’ll be my thought process heading into the season and obviously on game day.”