IN all probability, Callan Ward and Tom Scully will line up for Greater Western Sydney in its inaugural season and earn close to a million dollars a year.

It is easy to understand them taking up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but I feel both would be better placed at the end of their careers if they remained one-club players.

The extraordinary offer extended to Gary Ablett must have been almost impossible to refuse, and, all credit to him, he has delivered an outstanding first season for Gold Coast.

While the short-term financial gain for him is enormous, a case could be mounted that, over the course of time, had he stayed with Cats, his value as an iconic, fiercely loyal premiership hero would have been greater to him.

The goodwill for the Ablett brand in the city of Geelong, particularly if he had knocked back such a massive offer, would have been more than enough to set him up for life.

This is a harder dream to sell to Tom Scully, given he has only spent two seasons at Melbourne. But however romantic it may seem, I can picture Scully as the Demons' next premiership captain after having defiantly rejected a string of larger offers.

In a fanatical football town like Melbourne, where people are desperate to attach themselves to their heroes, Scully would be handed the keys to the city by the end of his career.

Sitting at the dinner table last week amid the chaos of four kids all chattering at once, I vaguely heard something on the Channel 10 news about big signings at the Western Bulldogs and I spun around to catch a glimpse of Callan Ward before the commercial break.

"Everyone settle down," I said, explaining to my eight-year-old, Sam, just how special this news was, and announced that all four kids were to get new jumpers sporting the number 14 whether they liked it or not.

But I was getting ahead of myself … a short while later Steven Quartemaine informed the Darcy household that, of the eight signings, Ward was the only notable player yet to put pen to paper.

What surprised me most was how much I cared.

I watched the way Chris Grant handled himself back in 1996 when Port Adelaide first entered the competition and it made a lasting impression on me.

Alongside Wayne Carey, Grant was the best player in the competition at the time and was facing this very dilemma. He famously received a 20 cent coin from a little boy named Ryan Adams with a letter attached to it saying that it was all he had but he hoped it was enough to keep him at the club.

Granty chose to stay and he has never regretted it.

"I'd fallen in love with the lure of wanting to be a one-team player," he said. "I didn't necessarily think I owed them anything, but I just felt, 'This is who I am now'."

A few years later, Nathan Brown chose to leave the Bulldogs for Richmond.

We were close mates at the time and it's fair to say I was extremely disappointed with his decision. Of course there was my self-interest in not wanting to lose a gun player to a fierce rival, but there was also a feeling that he wasn't going for the right reasons.

We didn't speak for over a year and we've never really spoken about him leaving since, but despite the great friendships he made at Richmond I still feel he would have been best served by staying a one-club player.

Loyalty has always been something that divides opinion.

Perhaps it's an old-fashioned view, or maybe the experience of watching two close mates make very different choices, but I still believe that loyalty is rewarded in the long run.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs