rufus

Out of interest, when did the idea of a club trading someone and continuing to pay part of their contract originate in the AFL? I don't really remember it prior to Grundy and as far as I know it doesn't happen in many other professional sports does it? At least it doesn't seem like in other sports you have players still being paid by a former club for multiple years after leaving? To me it just seems like a crazy path to go down. If you're going to part with a player it's hard to swallow the idea of paying them to play for someone else.

This is a good point, and ultimately I reckon it's the key reason why we ended up with 1 flag and no more from this group. If you add Oliver to the 5 you've listed, I reckon we have 1 in that group who is both a good enough player and good enough leader to drag the team over the line in big games. I reckon another 2 seem to be great leaders but probably just not quite good enough players. And the other 3 who are good enough players but who just don't have the leadership qualities. At the end of the day, a club can do everything possible off the field, but ultimately it's only the guys that go out on the field that can drive the final result.

It's actually a little ironic...if the reports are true that he doesn't feel wanted by Melb then how wanted do you feel by a club that seem to think your valued at about pick 20 and half your current salary?

Agreed. Time for this club to show some stones.

My own personal view (not knowing what disruption, if any, this player actually causes behind the scenes for our club) is no, we shouldn't accept that deal regardless of the full salary being paid. I'd rather spend a season letting him play the role he is best at and hopefully dominating so that worst case if he still wants to go in 12 months we might actually have some interested parties with some currency. The idea of trading an asset when it is at it's lowest value just makes no sense.

This would be a decent outcome for all 3 parties.

We're a joke if we are prepared to be paying over half a million bucks for a bloke to play in Geeling every year till 2030. Not going to happen surely. The first thing that needs to be covered off in any potential deal is to get rid of the salary. It'll be one thing to front the members and explain how our player management has seen the departure of popular players, but to also expect members to cop the idea that we'll be paying for the privilege of seeing them play somewhere else is a bridge too far.

Not sure why we should pay any of it? I don't think that'd be easy to sell to the MFC supporter base. If it's truly him who wants to go, the difference between what Geelong is prepared to pay him and what we were going to pay him should be written off by him.

Who knows what's actually going on. But if he's dead keen to leave, and so keen that he's willing to take a pay cut, surely that works in our favour. A pay cut would mean a completely new contract wouldn't it? Which would mean his contract with us was mutually agreed to be terminated. Which means he goes to Geel as a free agent. So the full contract would be off the books plus pick 6 or whatever it is in free agent compo. That could be a win win scenario.

My only interest on the topic of who coaches is that we have the person who gives us the best chance of winning it all. And my feeling is that the last 4 years have shown me that Goodwin has given these guys a method (albeit a very boring one to watch and maybe to play) that can win it all. We've been let down by the guys on the field in pressure moments consistently over the last 3 years. I'm starting to think Goodwin's effort to get this group to the ultimate prize was a pretty remarkable one. The same players who won it all have looked slow and pretty poor in pivotal contests once teams worked out they need to move the ball in ways that don't allow us the kind of numbers advantage we want. I am not confident that any other coach in the AFL could do better with these guys. And I reckon Goodwin himself will be in trouble if he loosens the defensive principles and tries to play a style where our players either win big contests or we get scored against regularly. Unless we turn over a lot of this list it is going to spell real trouble imo.

The things we've heard about Petracca's concerns around the Oliver stuff aren't clear at all. The way I see it, the concern might be one of a few things, each of which are very different: - maybe he's not happy with how we may have let Oliver get away with more than we perhaps should have for too long - maybe he's not happy with the way Oliver has applied himself - maybe he's not happy with the dumb way the club tried to 'scare' Oliver into line last year. If it's the third one above, he'll probably be loving what we've gone and done this week! We just looked like a joke doing it last year, and we look even worse this year.

If this is true then we truly have the dumbest of the dumb people in charge of the direction of the club. Whether it is you making contact or them making contact, why would you even start a dialogue with a club that you know is never going to give you fair value? All that can possibly do is drag multiple people/groups through the mud. You shut it down straight away with the common sense/knowledge that it would never be feasible anyway. If you're that keen to move someone on, engage with clubs you can feasibly see have the kind of assets you'd want. Heads to roll as part of this. It's actually the right thing to do to try and start to rebuild some credibility.

Problem really lies in the fact that they have no decent draft capital anyway. Which means our only option if dealing with them is to take the option of a full salary dump. Not ideal. In the NBA a high quality player like this would net you the teams next 4 or 5 1st round draft picks so that the weaker teams have some leverage against the stronger ones. Stronger teams don't care so much about their draft capital as they attract free agents easily to keep topping up...weaker teams can build a cache of high end draft picks and have a crack at developing a young core that can make a run at it.

Regardless of his role in that particular debacle, probably the main expectation of a CEO is that they have the club as a whole running like a well oiled machine...which it ain't. As a result we can't attract available players to our club, and players don't want to be sent here as part of a trade. We've been set back a good 5 years I reckon and we need to start fresh and try to build up again before the bottom completely falls out. It's time to go.

End of the day, regardless of who's done what or how this particular issue plays out, Pert is finished. Amongst many other things, a CEO is responsible for the image of an organisation. Our image is in the toilet so he has to go. Really he has to walk for the good of the club.

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.