praha

There's a reason why teams are locking away players for 7-10 years and backending their contracts. Oliver's contract looks bad now but in 5 years it'll be pretty normal for a player of his caliber.

Absolutely nothing about this makes sense and I'm happy people on Twitter are starting to notice, too. 1. Oliver is happy and ready to go for 2025 in red and blue. 2. Overnight, he is shopped around, and suddenly ends up on a farm on the outskirts of Geelong. Okay? 3. He suddenly wants to get to Geelong. After one meeting on a farm. No tour of facilities. No chat to the coach. Nothing. 4. Now he is willing to take a pay cut. Two sources - one from Geelong and one from his management group - say this on condition of anonymity. You're telling me this guy wants to leave a $1.5 million a year contract on the table, to take a paycut to play for Geelong? Overnight? Suddenly willing to take a paycut? Either this is absolute lunacy and just a made up story, or Geelong is pulling serious shifties.

It is Media Management 101 when you can't definitively answer: You don't lie, and you don't tell the truth. You dance around the truth and sit on the lie. Key messages: Clayton is very important to our team, he's highly valued by us and we love him at the club. Trade period is the only time of year where teams can come together to talk about improving their lists. During trade period you get trade offers, and you might spend 5 seconds or 5 days weighting up that offer. We are not actively seeking to trade Clayton. We can't stop teams from actively pursuing him or any other player during trade period.

Pretty sure Essendon have him locked up.

This guy doesn't give up.

That's shortened quite a bit. We were $51 and 15th about a week ago!

Yes two top 10 picks... few if any players in the league are worth more than that. But we aren't going to get that, are we? If the club can't reign in an off the rails 26 year old with that sort of resume, I genuinely have zero hope for the club.

One bad season after... 4 B&F 2x AFLCA awards 3x All-Australian 2x Coaches MVP List goes on... And before he turned 26. Also he played a full season after no pre-season. And still averaged above average stats for a midfielder. After being "Elite" in every category for most of his career. Insanity how quickly people both internally and externally are jumping off one of the all time greats after one bad season.

Same.

Source?

Suspect we'll hear something from the club today/tonight given the B&F tomorrow.

I've said it once and I'll say it again: trading him to Geelong is going to be one of the dumbest things we could do, and other clubs are going to be asking Melbourne what the hell they are doing. Reminder that Geelong dealt with this with Stevie J, Collingwood with Swan and Didak, Hawthorn with their own collection of issues, and Richmond with Martin. We somehow let our equivalent go from 4x B&F winner, multi-time All Australian, Coaches and Player MVP, to literally being the most cooked and overvalued contract in the league in the course of 12 months. We will lament this. Irrespective of his cultural and behavioural issues.

The clause is likely the trade and reduced terms. Most players can reject a trade. I suspect he may have voided his ability to reject any trade. A trade doesn't really benefit him because it likely comes with reduced benefits/incentives.

I will get over trading Oliver if we get something good in return that makes us reasonably stronger. I don't think I can get over us trading him to Geelong. Other clubs must surely be shaking their heads at Melbourne.

He probably shouldn't have been there. Don't even think he polled and a few other players way more deserving.