titan_uranus

3 hours ago, The Taciturn Demon said:

I like Max a lot and think he's excellent in the media.

But I notice here that he's gone the "grow up", "be mature" line. I hear it a lot when it comes to player movement. I've heard it for 20 or so years, to be honest.

I get where people who run with this line are coming from: nothing is forever, and certainly not in the top level of a very popular sport, where competition is ruthless. Also, there are always circumstances like the one we faced with Alex Neal-Bullen. Yes, the grown up thing in that case was to say "Yes, we love this player and want him to stay with us, but we know there's more to life than football". But...

... couldn't you mount an argument that the height of maturity or grown up thinking would have been to nip the problems we had in the bud as they became obvious.

What I mean is, yes, beloved players are always going to leave clubs and sadden fans. And there will always be excellent B-graders who are crucial to premiership success and get squeezed out when the cap space inevitably tightens. But great teams keep great players at their best for as long as possible. Great clubs naturally nurture one-club champions (or in Hawthorn's case 250-game champions who play two or three tepid seasons somewhere else).

It might be grown up for supporters to now concede that it's best to cut out losses with those two players and start afresh. It also might be grown up to say that Petracca and Oliver need to accept their fair share of responsibility for our precipitous drop. I think it's also important to be grown up about the huge mistakes of the past. Ignoring them or shrugging them away as spilt milk is not mature. To my mind, anyway.

I took this a completely different way.

To me, it was an indication that perhaps the penny has finally dropped.

We have spent 2022-25 trying to keep as much of the premiership winning 23 together as possible, not just on the list but on the field. We continued to try to get a supposed "best 23" to gel together with an argument that we needed to get the best 23 playing together as much as possible for results to come. So we kept playing the same guys over and over, and as a result didn't play other guys who were fit and at times in strong VFL form.

That extended to wanting to keep Trac and Clarry, despite what had happened to both of them in the last few years. The club's overall view was to keep everyone together where possible.

Now, whether it's because Goodwin's no longer there, or for other reasons, this is no longer our priority. So we let Trac and Clarry go, and we "grow up" and accept that our next flag isn't going to come about just by continuing to plonk members of the 21 flag winning side on the park.

36 minutes ago, rjay said:

Lets wait and see...

I hope he is good but I have reservations.

After all the talk from last preseason I would rather us be a little (lot) more low key.

Yes, we have had a big trade period and some things needed to be addressed & spoken about.

My personal opinion is that we are overplaying it.

...talk is cheap.

We have a new regime and we just turfed two MFC hall of famers, with members having deserted us all year

It would be incredulous if the new leaders didn’t get out there and talk about what we’re doing.

5 hours ago, rjay said:

We're certainly getting a lot of words.

I don't know if that translates to transparency.

I will wait and see the actions...and the results of those actions.

Didn’t take long to get the classic “talk is cheap” trope.

What do you want the club to do in [censored] October?

Yes, judge the club on how we play. But we can’t play until March. It’s brainless to suggest the club should say nothing until March, so just accept that in October (and November-February), the only thing the club can give us is words.

2 hours ago, Fat Tony said:

We would have got similar value for Petracca had he been uncontracted.

Petracca and Oliver were special cases because of selfishness and immaturity.

Thankfully he was under contract then!

Long term contracts aren’t always a bad thing.

As @Lucifers Hero says, Clarry netted us such an awful return for other reasons (off field stuff, and our mishandling which led to us having no negotiating leverage).

Steelers, Patriots, Falcons

7 hours ago, dazzledavey36 said:

No he shouldn't have.

Its been well communicated already right from the very start from Steven King to Tim Lamb. Every supporter on here knew the plan all along and why they were being traded.

Guerra said nothing that we already didnt know.

I don’t agree with any of this.

You only had to look on here to see how many didn’t understand why we traded Oliver, or are upset about him/Trac, or still think it should have been “no Humphrey, no Trac”.

And regardless, it’s absolutely the right thing to do for the club to acknowledge that we’ve just traded two future MFC hall of famers.

The point of the letter wasn’t to tell us something we didn’t already know. It was to acknowledge something meaningful happened, and to put a full stop behind it.

26 minutes ago, Demonology said:

Would love to see Langford in the 5

Anything except this.

Anything that doesn’t involve players moving jumpers.

5 was Trac. That’s a past era now. Let Langford become HL19. Make 19 the new 5.

1 hour ago, layzie said:

We don't need to grandstand every little success we have in the form of a letter. The Petracca trade was good for all parties, not unheard of in the trade world.

I appreciate the way Guerra communicates so this isn't against him but after a year of having letters to members to highlight things like great 3rd quarters in terrible performances I'm kind of over it.

Nah we just traded out two of the best players we’ve ever had, he 100% should have said something.

1 minute ago, dazzledavey36 said:

That’s a nice bonus.

Again, a sad day.

A genuine champion of our club walks out the door for a largely useless pick whilst we pay him to play for a flag contender.

It’s an appalling way for his chapter at Melbourne to end, no matter how you look at it.

Like with Trac, it’s time for us to launch into a new era with a new midfield, but I sure hope we had good reasons for this, because to my eyes, we’ve cocked this up.

A sad day. Was my favourite player. Brought us relevance, and of course a flag. At his best, which I believe he can regain, a top 5 league player.

Time for us to move into a new era with another 2 first round picks.

Just now, Tom Dyson said:

That insta comment is either god level trolling or a very exciting clue.

It’s the former.

Surely.

Surely…

I’m ok with using that pick. Spargo into CJ is not a loss. Whether it is a win remains to be seen, but here’s hoping!

We are and were never going to get Humphrey unless one of the following occurred:

1. GC believed we would take Trac back, and therefore had to cave before we did

2. GC value picks 7 and/or 8 higher than Humphrey and therefore would prefer to trade Humphrey and keep the picks

Point 2 would never occur given GC’s position needing points for the academy players.

So long as GC believe we won’t take Trac back, they’d never trade Humphrey. They will still get Trac and then, if need be, will trade Humphrey next year for additional picks (worth more to them in a stronger draft) or players.

42 minutes ago, bing181 said:

Take it and run. 7 & 8 (plus swapsies) for a 30 year old with his best years behind him and on $1.3 million which GC are prepared to pick up! They must be desperate, though equally, you see why they would do it. Marquee player, flag window, yadda yadda. None of the Vic clubs would even look at a deal like this for Trac, and surprise surprise, they didn't.

What do you mean none of the other Vic clubs didn’t look at the deal?

Trac nominated GC. He wasn’t inviting offers from Vic clubs.

Hawthorn have been distracted by Merrett, and look what they’re offering for him.

This wasn’t an open market where we were going to get to pit rivals bids against themselves.

Just now, Bombay Airconditioning said:

The bigger shambles was not dealing with him properly when he was out of control, I didn’t see too many people threatening to cancel their memberships then.

We knew this was coming, the club has to suck it up and move on for the betterment of the team.

If we knew this was coming, we should have let him go to Geelong last year.

Or we should have started this process earlier than two business days before trade period, so that we didn’t have to rush it.

There’s almost nothing we’ve done in relation to this situation that is anything other than shambolic. And we’re about to pay a ridiculously steep price for that.

21 minutes ago, 0livers Army said:

Giants doing exactly what I’d do. They know we’ve got no negotiating power.

We’ve stuffed this up. Surely we had to know how Oliver would react to getting pushed out. He’s recently committed to the club publicly and is known not to filter his words. The moment we made up the rubbish about playing at Casey (if true), we slashed his trade value and then it was completely dissolved once Oliver said he likes Collingwood more than us.

I really don’t know how bad Oliver would have to be off field to make us try to push him out. From reports on here he’s well liked by the playing group (at least most), is a hard trainer and has time for supporters. Anything outside that which justifies jetting off someone of his calibre surely approaches breach of contract type stuff.

Generally agree.

We have no leg to stand on, and they know it.

Unlike with Trac, where we’ve at least put up a public position of wanting him back, the way we’ve dropped this news on Clarry, so late and so abruptly, has destroyed any bargaining power we have.

Coupled with a contract that no one wants (us included), we’re absolutely stuffed. We have no choice but to take their lowball offer and move on.

Unsure about this. We need pace and a willingness to take the game on, but we don’t need poor kicking. Not sure where CJ lands on that matrix.

Hopefully nothing beyond a 3rd round pick for this one.

4 minutes ago, binman said:

For the sake of argument let's say that's a poor deal for tracc yet tge club us willing to take it.

Whar dows that about what our new coach and Football Department thinks about tracc in terms of what he brings to the club in totality - ie on field performance and off field contribution (eg leadership, role modelling, culture building etc).

Or it could say we’re just not very good at negotiating.

10 minutes ago, Chook in Perth said:

New stuff, that gives you nothing new.

Melbourne still really want him, and not the picks. Gold Coast still really won't do it.

Its at a passè.

Who blinks first?

Your answer in another 25 pages.

Thanks for answering the smoke signal, @Chook in Perth .

All this means is we’re back to what we’ve debated since this all started.

Are we prepared to have Trac come back and play for us next year?

If yes, we’re a chance here.

If no, we’re no chance.

Any insight on the club’s relationship with Trac?

Can we get @Chook in Perth to put this one to bed one way or another?

(…please?)

I’ve slept on it and I’m still not a fan of 7 & 8 for Trac and McVee.

That doesn’t feel like a trade that turns our heads. That doesn’t feel like a trade that is the best result for the MFC.

10 minutes ago, demoncat said:

This x100

7 and 8 is actually a decent deal for Trac, but it goes against our position of needing a deal that “turns our heads”

Once again our comms about our overarching strategy is terrible

If this is a fire sale/rebuild - say it, and stop leading supporters on that you’ll hold out for a great deal or Trac and Clarry will come back to the MFC

But if we send 24 back, then 7 and 8 aren’t our haul for Trac, they’re our haul for Trac and McVee.

1 minute ago, Ted Lasso said:

The issue is the sum of all parts of the off season.

I get what you're saying, 2 top 10 picks for Trac and his salary off the books in isolation is okay.

Losing Trac, McVee, Clarry plus 700k and a bunch of later picks, for 7, 8 and 36 in a compromised draft after Tim Lamb and Paul Guerra talked so tough about "Best interests of the MFC and have to turn our heads" is the issue

The messaging is shocking, and we will end up with what amounts to a fire sale

This is correct.

I’m confident part of the decision to sack Goodwin was PR-related - helping convince members to stay members and show up to games.

If our trade period results in the above (Trac, Clarry, McVee out, and 7, 8 and 36 in), I suspect a large segment of our membership/supporter base will be upset. It will go against Guerra and Lamb’s tough words, too.

Personally, I don’t think 7 and 8 for Trac and McVee is “head turning”, for example.

51 minutes ago, Colm said:

Sure it’s about that but it also has to be about a rebuild and we need draft picks or new players to do that.

Surely we can’t pay $700k of his wages and get a future third round pick for a player that has been in our best 22 every week even when not fit and if he gets back to his best will be a top 10 player in the comp.

Yeah but on form was he really best 23 for the back half of last year or the first half of this year?