Is this the elephant in the room?

We have Petracca and Oliver on very big contracts. Aging warriors like Gawn, May, and Viney, would also be on above average coin.

Given our list demographic…

Are the contracts of Petracca and Oliver, going to anchor us down?

Petracca will be 29 in Jan. 

1 minute ago, KingDingAling said:

Is this the elephant in the room?

We have Petracca and Oliver on very big contracts. Aging warriors like Gawn, May, and Viney, would also be on above average coin.

Given our list demographic…

Are the contracts of Petracca and Oliver, going to anchor us down?

Petracca will be 29 in Jan. 

You can say the same about other teams.

Freo for example. Jackson 1 million for 7 years. Darcy. Serong and Brayshaw. Their two tall defenders. And they are yet to pay for their key forwards.

Carlton even worse.

If they can manage, we should be able to manage.

We definitely need to change our thinking. If a team like Geelong can get away with 1 year deals for their older players, we shouldn't need to lock players away until their mid 30s. The Brayshaw situation should also be a reality check for us. 

10 minutes ago, poita said:

We definitely need to change our thinking. If a team like Geelong can get away with 1 year deals for their older players, we shouldn't need to lock players away until their mid 30s. The Brayshaw situation should also be a reality check for us. 

If we could find farms for these players instead, I am sure we could also get away with doing the dodgy stuff Geelong does.

I mean please find me an A+ grader at another club who hasn't been offered or recently signed a long term deal? 

West Coast are willing to offer Reid 10 years, is that not a wild risk?

The reality is, that you only have two options now to keep star players, pay them overs and risk damaging your list balance, or give them long term deals. Both options are risky, but both are necessary.

You think if we didn't offer Clarry, Trac and Gus long term deals, someone else wouldn't have? Gus was being chased by Freo hard. If he left because they offered him 5 years and we only offered him 4, this place would implode. 

Likewise if Trac or Clarry left the year they signed those long term deals, what would we have said?

We have not lost any player we wanted to keep beyond Jackson (and money was not the driving factor I assure you), and have been able to lure key players; May, Lever, Langdon, hell we got Grundy who was hot property. So these long term contracts have never stopped us from doing what we needed to do. We just recently signed Kosi, extended Roo and apparently convinced Petty to stay. 

List management is all about risk vs reward. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. It's really bloody unfortunate that after 6 concussion free years, Gus had to say goodbye to his career because Maynard is a POS! 

Edited July 22, 20241 yr by Jaded No More

What I think is lost in all of this is that in recent times the trade scenario has been a meat market. Players traded disrespected and shown no loyalty. I like it it that Melbourne have identified our generational players shown the commitment and signed them up for life. Surprise, sometimes players have bad years but rather than ditch them at the first sign of trouble we work with them and embrace them. 

Tom Mac ois a great example as this year he has been sensational coming off 2 injury riddled years that hobbled him. Big fat contracts don't ensure you are challenging for the Brownlow every year. Likewise I don't think some of the 2nd tier players we bought in have necessarily set the world on fire but they left because they no longer wanted to be at their club and came to us. Despite al the stuff written about our culture our players stay and only move if they cannot get a game (Jackson excepted but gee he is playing on a monster contract).

Edited July 22, 20241 yr by Older demon

31 minutes ago, Jaded No More said:

If we could find farms for these players instead, I am sure we could also get away with doing the dodgy stuff Geelong does.

I mean please find me an A+ grader at another club who hasn't been offered or recently signed a long term deal? 

West Coast are willing to offer Reid 10 years, is that not a wild risk?

The reality is, that you only have two options now to keep star players, pay them overs and risk damaging your list balance, or give them long term deals. Both options are risky, but both are necessary.

You think if we didn't offer Clarry, Trac and Gus long term deals, someone else wouldn't have? Gus was being chased by Freo hard. If he left because they offered him 5 years and we only offered him 4, this place would implode. 

Likewise if Trac or Clarry left the year they signed those long term deals, what would we have said?

We have not lost any player we wanted to keep beyond Jackson (and money was not the driving factor I assure you), and have been able to lure key players; May, Lever, Langdon, hell we got Grundy who was hot property. So these long term contracts have never stopped us from doing what we needed to do. We just recently signed Kosi, extended Roo and apparently convinced Petty to stay. 

List management is all about risk vs reward. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. It's really bloody unfortunate that after 6 concussion free years, Gus had to say goodbye to his career because Maynard is a POS! 

On Jackson, are you sure money didn't play even a small part?

How much were we offering? Perhaps 700k or 750k, given the limited cap space we had at the time.

Meanwhile Freo comes and offers 1 million a year to a 3rd year player. 

He had the choice to become the heir to Max Gawn but said, nah I'll take the money please.

He could have made a similar amount of money with us, if he was willing to wait for his time in 2 or 3 years down the road.

1 minute ago, ElDiablo14 said:

On Jackson, are you sure money didn't play even a small part?

How much were we offering? Perhaps 700k or 750k, given the limited cap space we had at the time.

Meanwhile Freo comes and offers 1 million a year to a 3rd year player. 

He had the choice to become the heir to Max Gawn but said, nah I'll take the money please.

He could have made a similar amount of money with us, if he was willing to wait for his time in 2 or 3 years down the road.

It was 100% not money related. 
The pressure from his family to return to WA would have trumped any offer we had on the table.

We didn’t lose him because of money. 
He was very happy at the club, and happy with the multiple options we put to him. 
Unfortunately he is a very immature kid and he wasn’t in the driving seat. 
 

I won’t say more than that, but trust me when I say that he didn’t leave for the money. Adelaide could have given him $2million and he wouldn’t have gone. 

6 minutes ago, Jaded No More said:

It was 100% not money related. 
The pressure from his family to return to WA would have trumped any offer we had on the table.

We didn’t lose him because of money. 
He was very happy at the club, and happy with the multiple options we put to him. 
Unfortunately he is a very immature kid and he wasn’t in the driving seat. 
 

I won’t say more than that, but trust me when I say that he didn’t leave for the money. Adelaide could have given him $2million and he wouldn’t have gone. 

Are we thinking there's a bit of tampering involved?

If I remember correctly his parents were/are well connected with Freo.

2 minutes ago, ElDiablo14 said:

Are we thinking there's a bit of tampering involved?

If I remember correctly his parents were/are well connected with Freo.

No tampering, just a lot of pressure on a kid who let’s be honest, is no rocket scientist. 

I think we did what we had to do in committing long term to our A graders who were all 23-26 at the time of their deals. From all understanding these contracts were done in the best possible way to keep the list together and protect the club at the same time. I can't really fault it to be honest. Impossible to know the exact financials but from the outside it seems good. 

Apart from the situation with Brayshaw which was completely unforeseen we've done a pretty good job there.