Well, it's clear that list rebuilding really isn't the exact science some thought it would be - and I'm almost glad about that. How boring would it be, if we had these ongoing cycles where clubs would plan for their '5 years down the bottom', sacking club stalwarts and plundering as many draft picks along the way.

It's as if we were treating the club like a computer game: If we spend X amount of years down the bottom of the ladder and get x amount of games into these players, we can expect our first premiership in 2015.

In the struggle between business and club, I think we leaned too far towards business - notions of club loyalty, pride and leaderhip were all disregarded. To assume any player could fill the void left by McDonald and that the players wouldn't be affected by his departure was also symptomatic of our thinking.

The players aren't robots, they're boys and has been mentioned in other threads, we've basically put ourselves in the same position as Gold Coast and GWS.

Still, maybe in 2020 we'll have 4 more premiership cups in the cabinet and it will all have been worth it. Things are just a bit too uncertain at the moment.

I'm not in the habit of bumping threads but thought I'd try out the triple-bump.

As many intelligent posters on here are often heard to say, "we live in interesting times". And here I was worried about culture. Who would have thought the AFL might actually take this stuff seriously.