KozzyCan

He really is the worst

Isn't that what Essendon did? Then once they worked out the leaker they told him Hird had been sacked and let Caro make a fool of herself.

Career averages are a bit of a misnomer as players tend to have a bit of a bell curve over their career as they go from their early years to their prime to their twilight. Viney has also struggled a lot with injuries throughout his career which has affected his performance in some seasons. I haven't seen any significant change in his role between the flag and this year but maybe I'm missing something. Looking at Viney's recent years and you can see his 2024 was trending downwards from the previous two years. Not massively, but it was there. He's still a good player but the signs are there. No one beats father time. He's over 30 as a crash and bash midfielder. For those guys when the end comes it comes fast. We've signed him up until the end of 2028, which is a long time for a player of his age and type. He will be 34 when the deal finishes up and I would be very surprised if he's able to keep up to the AFL level for three years let alone four. North may have offered him the same amount but that's what you often have to do if you want to extract a player out of their club. Ultimately we still had him signed up for another year so there wasn't any need to get spooked by the North offer and we still could have given him another year or two as a sweetener, but not three. I think we blinked to put the story to bed when the club was under the pump.

Compared to his own record? Yes he was. For comparison hes the same age as Jones was in 2018 who's form dropped off substantially the following year and within two years was struggling to get selected.

I love Viney, and yes he won the BnF in a horrible year (personally thought Gawn was significantly better) but he's 30 and his stats were trending down this year and we gave him an extra two years when he still had a year to go on his contract. Personally I would have given him one extra year for the security as a reward for his loyalty not two.

There are some reports that Viney's extension was exactly that. I think there is probably a bit of that. Jones would be the second choice for the role after Sloane, but Goodwin is clearly filling the ranks with his mates. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact most coaches do it, so I'm not against it as the coach needs to be in charge of his own team. If it goes pear shaped it will also fall on his shoulders next year.

Clearly the club wanted this to leak.

Decent sook from Ralph.

Good result for the Cats, and hopefully means we see a more even fixture with the big 4 being sent down there. I also like that Easter Monday remains at the MCG as it's a marquee game, but in the years the Hawks host they should get the extra home game at Geelong.

This thread is wild. Some posts look like they're straight out of A Beautiful Mind.

If we have another bad season the best case scenario would be those two having good individual seasons without incident then we can do what Richmond did this year and trade them to fund our rebuild.

It's funny that if that Trade Whisperer account was posing that Oliver was gone people would be raging and saying it's complete bs.

Do you think he had such schemes in mind during his first stint on the board?

A tabloid editorialising to entice readers? Knock me down with a feather.

Freeman was one of the first board appointments of PJ according to this article: https://www.smh.com.au/sport/afl/melbourne-appoints-exbomber-jackson-as-interim-ceo-20130418-2i27h.html

It's a boring time of year and we gave them a feed that was guaranteed to last them the whole trade period.

I highly doubt we're going to trade Oliver just because the media says we should.

Peter Jackson rated him very highly.

It's the AFL's fault for forcing Pert on us.

The last line of your post is the trick isn't it.

That's not how free agency works. You can't just kill a contract because the compo will be better than the trade.

We had multiple clubs interested in him. His form hadn't dropped off yet and most of his off-field issues were still pretty hush hush. He also hadn't had the preseason from hell yet. I think we absolutely would have gotten two firsts out of Adelaide had we traded him last year.

His trade value was much higher last year than it is this year.

I've been reading the thread on and off, I must have missed the examples you're talking about. That being said a lot of people mistake a situation changing for a journo getting it wrong. For example the Petracca story which was very real and Morris was spot on despite the club eventually holding Petracca to contract. I would say Sam Mclure has a much worse strike rate than Morris. An obvious example being his West Coast/Reid call. So I take his reporting with a massive grain of salt but have generally found Morris to be pretty reliable even if he hedges his bets a bit.

This is Lloyd regurgitating McClure's articles. When Oliver requests a trade it will be on, but until then it's still where the club left it at the BnF.