praha

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.

On top of that, reaching out to a team you'd hope you would be contending against. Just dumb!

What are his actions? He looks like he's in the best shape for years.

After how 2023 ended, then the Oliver saga, then reports about club culture, then the Petracca saga, and now this again, I am already out for at least the first third of next season. I'll still get my AFL membership but I'm not attending games. No club in the league treats its fans with as much contempt as MFC does. I am done for now. And if they let Oliver walk to Geelong of all places for nothing, it would take nothing short of a Prelim appearance to have been even contemplating returning to the club. I can't believe we are even in a situation with our 4-tims B&F, multi-award winning and All Australian, premiership winning midfielder is about to walk to [censored] Geelong on a 5 year deal for peanuts in return. Anyone even trying to justify this is deluded.

If you're in the window, Rule No.1 is to never deal with a contender. We must be in full rebuild mode to even contemplate trading to Geelong. Hope everyone's ready for the ride. It's all in for 2026/2027 in my view.

We would have to be properly dumb in the head to send him to Geelong of all places.

I'd be very surprised if this doesn't already exist.

Media relations at the club are a joke. Pert brought in Clare Petty to lead our Comms department. How are we getting destroyed in the media and always seem late to the party to respond? We've somehow gotten worse at it. In my 20 years in corporate affairs I've never seen such contempt for a major stakeholder (being the supporters in a footy club's case). The comms strategy is in the toilet. They need to work harder and better and controlling the narrative here. Seems like a massive disconnect between the CEO office, the football department, and the media team. Key job as chief/GM of comms is to control the external messaging, and build internal ambassadors and engagement to avoid leaks/disgruntled comments externally. https://x.com/JoshGabelich/status/1769602121350156534?s=19 If you're going to "deny deny deny" you need to craft it in a way that is neither the truth nor a lie. Melbourne straight up lies.

Anyone listened yet and can summarise?

This makes no sense. You don't categorically deny the rumours and say a player of his popularity and calibre will be at the club next year, while at the same time privately shopping him around, mere weeks after the club was leaking stories almost daily about Petracca (and now Kozzie). Either the club is straight up lying to its supporters, in which case we should he disgusted and very angry, or the club is in disarray. Which one? Are supporters being take for mugs or is the club breaking down?

Russell Robertson saying now on SEN that "no player is bigger than the club." Very odd from him.

I wouldn't be surprised. The football department would have signed off on the statement. The CEO has no place shopping players around. And the statement wouldn't have come across his desk. That would be a sackable offense in a large corporate if the CEO was actively and privately going against the company's approved and confirmed messaging. The board should act immediately if it's true.