GIANTS General Manager of Football Jason McCartney joined AFL Trade Radio on Monday ahead of the 2023 Continental Tyres Trade Period, which begins next week.

McCartney confirmed the club is interested in securing Adelaide utility Elliott Himmelberg to join his brother Harry at the GIANTS next season.

While Himmelberg still has a year to run on his deal at the Crows, McCartney said the GIANTS were hopeful he’d be in orange and charcoal next season.

“We’d really like to (get him to the club) as a positional need,” he said.

“We had some really good chats with Adelaide a fair way out because this one is a little bit different because you need to be quite mindful and respectful that Elliott still has a year left on his contract before he becomes a free agent, so we’ll continually work through that.

“I know Adelaide’s got a little bit on their plate, manoeuvring and doing a few things at the moment, they’d love to have some coverage in that position if he was to leave.

“We see it as an opportunity. It’d be a role and position that the club’s done really well with someone like Lachie Keeffe over a long period of time.

“Elliott is a similar size and plays a variety of positions, he can really add value to the group at 25 years of age.”

McCartney said the club would also love to re-sign the uncontracted Keeffe but said the popular utility’s tenure at the GIANTS would depend on a number of factors.

“It’s just in limbo at the moment, just waiting,” McCartney said of Keeffe’s situation.

“It’s an interesting one for us with not looking to be moving too many players out this year, list spots become a bit of a juggling act.

“So, we’ll just work through that, obviously we’ve got consideration for a rookie list as well. The great thing about playing right to the death, the guys who are in limbo are only there for a couple of weeks before they get more clarity.

“We’re just working closely with Lachie and his manager.

“Lachie has been an outstanding servant of our footy club but it’s just a tricky situation to be in because if we had the list spots available it’d be an absolute certainty that he’d get another year and I know he’s keen to play on.

“But we’ve got to manoeuvrer a few things before we can actually be in a position to say that could happen with us.”

McCartney also spoke about the club’s current ruck stocks, revealing popular clubman Matt Flynn was exploring his options elsewhere while Braydon Preuss was likely to remain a GIANT.

“Matt’s a wonderful person, he’s come through our Academy… but we haven’t been in a position to offer Matt a contract so him and Scott Lucas (his manager) have done the right thing and explored options,” McCartney said.

“We’ve been working with him a little bit on this, maybe advising in the background to help him, obviously Scott is a wonderful manager and gives him the best advice, but he’s looking for an opportunity to play more regular football.

“Obviously Kieren Briggs really stood up and shone through in the second half of the year.

“It’s fair to say he’s [Flynn] weighing up options now, between West Coast and Melbourne is what it looks like, but I don’t think he’s actually come to a final decision on that yet.

“Those clubs will hear more soon, as we will.”

Flynn played the first nine games of the 2023 season to take his career tally to 33.

McCartney said the club waited until the end of the season to determine how to best construct their ruck stocks moving forward following Briggs’ emergence.

“We hadn’t put offers to either of those two players in Matt and Braydon because what we were doing in the back half of the year is just assessing what we want that ruck space looking like going forward,” he said.

“With both those boys, obviously Braydon has missed a lot of footy with injury, he got back and played VFL at the end of the year and just that continuity of training and playing match sim during the finals to make sure we had a level of confidence in him potentially being able to stand up.

“It’s a position that you don’t want too many, but you don’t want to be too short,” he said.

“We’ll be going forward with Braydon and obviously Kieren, and we’ve got Nick Madden who made some really good strides this year as a category B option, so we’ll look at our ruck stocks in that light.”

The 2023 Free Agency Period opens this Friday, with the Continental Tyres Trade Period to run from Monday, October 9 to Wednesday, October 18.