rufus

Good. Keep it at 'any'.

Highly unlikely I guess...would be a decent outcome if that could happen and he effectively goes as a free agent...we'd get a good compo pick and no leftover money to pay.

Especially if we are left with nothing more than an ongoing bill for his employment (at one of our competitors).

Does anyone know the rules around renegotiating contracts? I.e. if a player really wants to leave, but we are not prepared to pay part of their salary at a rival, can they simply renogotiate with the destination club for a smaller contract?

Between the big name players fumbling under pressure and the administration fumbling under pressure we've produced one of the great downfalls from the high of 2021. If the club thinks we need to make playing personnel changes in order to become a better football club then in theory I guess we should trust them. Trouble is their approach to player management over the past 12+ months has been nothing short of bizarre. Everything they apprently do seems to work to drop the value of our players and weaken any negotiating power. If we end up paying one our greatest ever players to play his peak years at another club, while receiving bugger all back, then the club is going to see a backlash rarely seen before. And coming off a foundation that really isn't built to weather that kind of storm I think this is going to end really badly. My gut feel now is that we need to move on the clowns who are driving our current method of managing the players and try to get all our stars back in the fold and on the same page.

Who knows what to believe at this point. But if this has been driven by Pert then today should be his last day as an employee of the football club. As if we haven't already been enough of a joke for the last 12 months. Right now this club is just extremely hard to like from pretty much every angle.

Unfortunately I think you are right here. I personally would refer it not be Oliver as at his best I think he is a top 3 player in the league. Would prefer he gets back to the shape he was in on GF day 2021 (considerably different to this season). I also think the idea of paying some of someone's salary must be some kind of joke. Why would we want to pay him to work his way back to his best somewhere else? We should be committing to helping him get back to his best with us. I'd be much more amenable to trying to convince Petracca to go to a club that has some decent currency as I think at their best Oliver is in a completely different class. That is assuming what has been reported about Petracca being desperate to get out is true.

I would be quite happy if our players wanted his blood...or wanted 'revenge' against Collingwood or even just wanted to physically smash Collingwood in a match just because they're an opponent who always make us look weak. But our players don't ever seem too fussed about it so no point in us getting riled up.

Swans bigfooty has a sack Horse thread running. How much responsibility should the coach take for the players not having their intensity up at the level of the oppo? For me, it's the players. These guys are way off and if they were competing as hard as the Bris guys then you could start questioning the tactics if they're still getting done...the players have been so poor here. Who on the field is willing these guys to turn the tide?

Swans getting exposed by pressure. If you want an AFL match to be decided by talent you need to at least match the pressure levels. Lions may have more talent, but this one's being decided by pressure. Unforgivable by Syndey for the 2nd time in 3 years.

No offense taken. Just my opinion. If you honestly think that year in year out, week in week out, when the MFC take the field they appear as desperate to win as the Pies generally do then that's great. You likely enjoy watching us play much more than I do. I also reckon if you surveyed other neutral supporters they'd probably agree that in general MFC players are a tad soft and we're a club that prefers to find and excuse than to find a way.. while Collingwood are not.

Feel for Brayshaw and obviously it's been a loss for us not having him. But the obsession with Maynard and Collingwood is in my opinion the cringiest thing imaginable. To me, if the incident was actually the thuggish act that Melb supporters seem to feel it was, then it was only marginally that. Brayshaw obviously had a rough history with head knocks and was in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Collingwood may injure more people but reality is they play the game harder than we do. It's one thing for our fans to be outraged and breathing fire at the prospect of responding to the Pies, but when our players come out with relatively meek physicality every time they match up you start to realise our players mustn't feel as strongly about it as the fans do. If we want to focus any attention on Collingwood or Maynard, it should be to study how they are able to compete harder than our players for longer than our players.

I don't know. Pendlebury has been at Coll for multiple windows (2009-2011 was probably a pretty talented group, their 2018 and 2023 groups were just bog ordinary competitors). Selwood multiple windows. Even if you think it's too much of an advantage, from an MFC perspective we just needed to maximise the window with what might have been the best group of talent we will have for a long time. Maybe a flag was maximising it? I don't think we did and it was because our big guns weren't good enough against the best opposition, and across the board we couldn't go as hard for as long as any of the top end teams. Culture might be over rated, but I respect sporting teams that find a way rather than teams that find an excuse.

I don't believe it is related to the academy. They have built a culture of relentless competitiveness. Have not seen a contest or a chase they haven’t committed to. Have seen Port, similar to last week, just not quite go hard enough when they've needed to. That is the difference between the Syd, Haw, Coll cultures and that of Port and us (amongst others).

Hopefully nothing. The last thing this club needs right now is to move away from Goodwin IMO.

The strangest part is the suggestion of wanting 2 of the 3 gone. Well are they good at their role or not? If not, why want any of the 3 to stay? Doesn't add up to me.

Will be an interesting watch. Hawthorn historically find a way rather than look for an excuse. We'll see I guess.

Spot on. And the strength of our position does not change next year, the year after or the year after that. Free agency was brought in so that at the END of a contract and after an extended period of service a player can choose where they want to play. At the end of a contract prior to extended service, the club chooses where the player plays, or if the player dislikes their club so much they can go to the draft and get out to a (likely) bottom team. When under contract, the club chooses where the player plays. Full stop. With the system working like this, all parties get their time when they have the power. Players should plan their contracts around this and clubs will be managing the contracts of their entire list around this being the way it will work.

Add that game the many thousands of VFL/AFL games before where a team makes a match out of it purely by playing with high intensity. Hawks have a history of over achieving and it's because there are no excuses...just go hell for leather when you're on the big stage. Bog ordinary team representing a club with a culture of competing. People bemoan why no one wants to watch us play...it has less to do with the game style and more to do with the fact that we just don't compete as hard as these successful clubs. It showed up time and time again (including finals).That's what people want to watch. It's not up to the president. It's not up to the CEO. It's not up to the fitness guy and that part shouldn't come down to the coach. It's the players.

Oliver the best Demon player I've seen in my lifetime (just ahead of Gawn). It seems he may have turned a corner off field and it sounds like he's determined to get back to where he was on the field (which is as good as anyone in the country). I'd like to think the mail was slightly misconstrued and we shut it down immediately. If he's committed to getting himself and the team back to where we were 3 years ago then I want him to be a Demon for life. There's no offer that could match what he brings at his best and we should show loyalty based on his commitment to drive us forward.

Not sure where you're getting your info from, but if what you are saying is fact then it would put a whole different light on everything. If all that happened behind the scenes was that he demanded that the club get better, while remaining committed to helping drive that betterment then he is nothing other than a hero from my perspective. Someone needs to demand it. Where did all the other junk that was being spoken come from then?

I remember Scott Pendlebury saying something along the lines of how AFL football is a much simpler game than many seem to think. He said at Collingwood they see it mostly as an 'effort' sport. The Hawks just seemed to do everything at a higher intensity than the Dogs last night. It's hard to believe that could happen in a final, but it just seems to keep happening. Hawks have a history of finding ways to win...starting with high effort like that. You can honestly play any style you like and if you do it with that intensity you'll hit the scoreboard...and if you do it with the Dogs' intensity of last night you'll struggle to create chances to score. Maybe it's the coaches who are responsible for getting the players to go at the required level, but I put it on the players. This is the same area in which we've been let down too many times over the last few years. Hopefully our players come back next year with a hunger to compete at that higher intensity level...if they do everything will look completely different for us.

The best case scenario is that Petracca buys back into the club and: - doesn't hold himself out from playing when ready next year to preserve himself for a new club in 2026. This may also play to lower his perceived value on the trade market. - provides the leadership we need, whether he's actually able to play or not, to try and drive the professionalism of the playing group to the standards we all want. Worst case scenario is that we get pushed at the end of next year to accept lowball offers based on what plays out during the season. If other clubs want him 2026 it should be very clear that with 4 years still to run on the contract, you're going to need to come to us with something very appealing. The club should hold very firm on this.

Ouch. Not really sure why the club want to retain him if that is true. Doesn't sound like someone who made this noise to try and better the club. I would hope that behind closed doors we try pretty hard to convince him to give the Gold Coast or North Melbourne a shot if he hates Melbourne so much...or maybe even see if he'd void his contract and we let him go as a free agent. Take pick 6 and see if we can draft a character who'll keep 2 feet in the door from start to finish.

The media guys are going beautifully with this one aren't they. TM: If he could have got out he would have (ipso facto he simply can't stand the idea of being at Melbourne anymore). It seems likely that he could have gotten out...it just would have had to be to a club that might have had a smaller profile...one where perhaps he wouldn't be playing under the brightest of lights each week? I wonder if that would have impacted his brand? I guess not hey. It's much more likely Melb leadership got together and thought 'how about we make up some stuff about him being conerned about his brand to make him look bad'. Yep that sounds more like it. Just like in many other forums around the world these days, the problem isn't so much bottom feeders like the AFL media, it's the fact that enough people believe what they hear enough to follow along. And it's not that I don't believe we're a bit of a mess right now as a club...it's just that I'd much prefer to hear the facts of what's going on than supposition from people who just possibly aren't historically all that trustworthy.