Carlton Blue Harry McKay 'collateral damage' in Melbourne Demon Christian Petracca trade hype

Carlton spearhead Harry McKay has lamented becoming the “collateral damage” in trade speculation surrounding disgruntled Melbourne star Christian Petracca.

Speculation surrounding Petracca’s future reached fever pitch in recent weeks despite being contracted until the end of 2029.

He ultimately did not request a trade and has since committed to playing at the Demons next season.

But before his statement on Saturday, Petracca was understood to be keen to move to a big Victorian club, namely Collingwood or Carlton, with McKay’s name thrown up as potential collateral.

McKay’s manager David Trotter quickly shut down that discussion, but it proved a “full on” period for the 26-year-old forward.

“It’s always a strange 48 hours or so when your name is raised in a situation like that, like trade speculation,” McKay told the Ben and Harry podcast.

“It was during our bye so I was sitting at home and got a call from my manager saying, ‘Look, there’s this article that’s going to come out, your name’s going to be raised. Obviously there’s nothing to it, it’s all hypothetical.’

“So I knew there was going to be an article at some stage come but probably how it was reported later on that day was a bit more full-on than how I was thinking it was going to be.

“That next 24 hours you get a lot of calls, lot of messages, family members asking, checking in, seeing what’s going on.

“I’m not sure people fully understand - they might think it’s just part of the job and that’s what you put up with as a player and there’s definitely an element of that. But it’s (how it affects) the people close to you.”

McKay, who is contracted until the end of 2030, said Carlton had quickly moved to reassure him they weren’t looking to offload him but he had experienced fans asking if he was going to move to Melbourne.

“Everyone at the club was awesome,” he said.

“It was a really good sign of a really good culture from the club when key stakeholders, people were ringing me up straight away, obviously having a laugh about it, saying there’s ‘no merit to anything, mate you’re super valued’.

“It was really good from that point of view and I think the club was great.

“It’s more definitely as an industry, because we’re in the media game ... sometimes we need to have more awareness around throwing a name hypothetically up and not understanding the collateral damage that has sometimes.”

McKay is hoping to prove his fitness and return from a quad injury in Saturday night’s elimination final against Brisbane at the Gabba.