JUST a week before Steven Icke became Dick Pratt's first recruiting coup at Carlton, he had been sitting on the balcony of his Perth home overlooking the river on a balmy evening sipping a wine with his wife Jo.

They decided that they would sell everything they owned in Melbourne and stay in Perth forever. A week later, he was a new Blue.

Icke, Carlton's new football operations manager, said Pratt's vast experience and energy since stepping into the president's role was playing a crucial part in helping him and new Blues chief executive Greg Swann fast-track the resurgence of the club.

With the hairs of his neck still standing after Carlton swamped Essendon* with a record comeback win in front of 65,000 screaming fans at the MCG last Saturday, Icke now has the task of securing one-third of the club's list, including key out-of-contract youngsters such as Andrew Walker, Josh Kennedy and Kade Simpson.

I remember the lions were ready to offer Marc 5 years upon recruitment. Not sure if Carlton matched that but I am pretty sure they offered more than the basic 2 years for new recruits

"Now that (football manager) Steven Icke has come on board I can back away a bit from the hands-on stuff. Obviously what he has to do is re-sign our young blokes - (Marc) Murphy, (Josh) Kennedy, (Andrew) Walker and (Kade) Simpson have to be tied up and Nick Stevens and Lance (Whitnall) are out at the end of the year, too.