THE market for footballers closed with the pre-season draft. Not so, the market in football intelligence.

The intra-club trade in off-field expertise — assistant coaches, recruiters, fitness advisers, executives and the like — has continued at a brisk pace.

Yesterday, Melbourne replaced Craig Cameron as recruiting manager with Barry Prendergast who will inherit a network missing Cameron's second-in-command, Paul Collins, who has been lured to St Kilda to re-unite with former Essendon colleague John Peake, who is the Saints recruiting manager.

On Tuesday, Port Adelaide announced that it had appointed Daniel Comerford as it's new head fitness coach. Comerford, who worked for some time as an assistant to David Buttifant at Collingwood, replaces Darren Burgess who now works with the Socceroos.

Last week it was Collingwood's veteran forward scout John Wardrop leaving Mick Malthouse's side for Hawthorn, not to mention the move of Eugene Arocca to take the chief executive's post at North Melbourne.

This traffic is occasionally international. Essendon. for instance, has added to its rehabilitation team Mark Cera who is fresh out of the Chinese Institute of Sport but more often than not the trading and procuring is kept within the confines of the football bazaar.

Post-season, Cameron left Melbourne after a decade for Richmond and Chris Fagan, another long-time Melbourne assistant coach and manager, headed to Hawthorn where football department spending is on the up.

Kelly O'Donnell left Fremantle with Chris Connolly to return to the Demons as an assistant to new coach Dean Bailey. Former Melbourne coach Greg Hutchison was hired from the Kangaroos by St Kilda to coach its VFL affiliate, Casey, and head up the club's development program. The Saints were busier than most. They also poached head fitness coach David Misson from Sydney and new football manager Matthew Drain from the Bulldogs.

Drain was effectively replaced at Whitten Oval by former Adelaide recruiting manager James Fantasia.

■ Chris Judd's seemingly certain ascension to the Carlton captaincy moved a step closer yesterday when he was selected to the Blues leadership squad of six.

With last year's captain Lance Whitnall in retirement, the new leadership team also includes Brendon Fevola, Andrew Carrazzo, Heath Scotland, Kade Simpson and Nick Stevens. The new captain will be named during the NAB Cup.

"I think Juddy will be captain, he's got all the qualities," Fevola said.