Bad week for core supporters as Hawks put sport as business over loyalty
Michael Gleeson
Sally is a friend of mine. She is a smart woman, tertiary educated and has a deep love of sport. She has grown up in it and understands it. She is passionate about Hawthorn a club for whom she holds a love that might even outshine that for her four children. Almost.
She took this week badly. She took it like she would if one of her kids let her down.
"It feels like they ask you to emotionally invest in the club and you buy into it and they win four flags but then when they are done it is just gone. [Sam] Mitchell didn't even seem sad to go, he was excited about it," she said.
She tuned out of the trade period after that. Jaegar O'Meara coming in will please her next year no doubt once he gets out there in a brown and gold jumper, but still there will be a feeling of wishing for another Mitchell to still be there in round one.
Jordan Lewis (left), Alastair Clarkson, and Sam Mitchell (right) with Luke Hodge (second from right) in happier times.
Jordan Lewis (left), Alastair Clarkson, and Sam Mitchell (right) with Luke Hodge (second from right) in happier times. Photo: Getty Images
Logically she knows these are probably the right decisions but football following is not supposed to be logical. Its charm is in its muddle headedness.
It's why she is grieving for Mitchell and Jordan Lewis. It's because it was not just one player who left but two. Not just two players but the best two players this year and some of the best they have ever had. It's because they didn't approach the club with the plan, the club went to them.
She has always known football is a business – Buddy did that – but she still thought her club was different, better somehow. And beside Buddy was the one who wanted to go, Clarko didn't tap him on the shoulder and ask if he liked the Margaret River.
This week she realised the accuracy of the platitude of sport as business. She will still follow her club, because that's what you do, but the coldness that informs the clear-eyed thinking of how the next premiership team will be built will also chill her embrace of her club.
Emotionally investing in a club which then makes unemotional decisions about those you are most emotionally invested in does that to your sense of connection.
The club being bigger than the individual is the trite concept that underpins difficult discussions at any club but it is equally true that it is the individuals within a club that make it a club.
Hawthorn has always been the Family club. Until this week it was not so readily apparent there was a Sicilian bent to the notion of The Family.
This week football sent a Corleone-like message to its players and fans "don't be offended it's business".
Indeed his week the Hawks had to provide a reassurance that was redolent of Michael Corleone in the Godfather: "There are negotiations being made that are going to answer all of your questions and solve all of your problems. That's all I can tell you right now."
Ironically the most brutal trade period came only weeks after the premiership win that was the greatest victory for the true believers. It was the premiership that warmed the heart for those who had waited so long, who had hung on and endured. Their emotional investment paid a dividend.
Luke Beveridge draping his medal around Bob Murphy's neck on the podium was the moment that in one gesture spoke to the virtues of the game. It spoke to the bond of club and loyalty and honour. Bob was the player who stayed, who took over as captain when his club needed him.
Weeks later a player who had been in that team, who had in 12 late games this year claimed his spot, left to take a million dollar contract across the country. And rightly, no one begrudged him.
"This is the new normal," a senior AFL person said on Friday, acknowledging that the change has been coming but this trade period feels like a tipping point in shifting beyond the sacrosanct.
"The NRL have been doing this for years and now we are catching up. This is the future of the game – players wanted transportability and they have got it but with that clubs also exercise more transportability. Players can't have it all their own way."
Next year there will be more Collingwood premiership players playing at other teams than playing for them. A full team of 22 premiership players by position could be fielded (named with this article) next year who are now at other clubs.
This has been coming but this year clearly marked amove in the trade period. The names are bigger, the contracts more often a suggestion than a restriction (other than in the end for Bryce Gibbs) and the trade freer.
Just 10 years ago in the 2006 trade period a mere nine players changed clubs.
Two years later it was worse (or better depending on your perspective). In 2008 there were just six deals done. The talk all year had centred on the futures of Jon Brown at Brisbane, Alan Didak leaving and Daniel Kerr being shopped around. But all of them stayed.
Indeed that year Ryan O'Keefe pre-dated Bryce Gibbs by insisting he wanted a trade but then like Gibbs ended up having to walk back in the door at the Swans.
In contrast this year there were 39 deals done. The fantasy football generation love this period but for others the moment fantasy meets reality is when players like Mitchell, Lewis, Brett Deledio walk out the door.
There has always been player movement but there has also always been players whom clubs would not countenance shifting for they were the fabric of the club.
Nick Dal Santo and Brendon Goddard were close to those types of players but they left. Their departures sent a shiver through the Saints but the message of change and modern reality and the club being the better for the moves was sold and accepted.
However the idea of Nick Riewoldt leaving would have been another step again.
St Kilda knew they could never have done Riewoldt.
It would have been thought Mitchell and Lewis were those players but by degrees that idea of the untouchable has now disappeared.
Sally knows her club's thinking was most likely right but the decision still does not sit comfortably. She contents herself that the club will probably have made the right decision because making good decisions is what has made Hawthorn a good club. She also knows that next year she will be there again, but she doubts she will emotionally invest the way she had.
Michael Gleeson
Sally is a friend of mine. She is a smart woman, tertiary educated and has a deep love of sport. She has grown up in it and understands it. She is passionate about Hawthorn a club for whom she holds a love that might even outshine that for her four children. Almost.
She took this week badly. She took it like she would if one of her kids let her down.
"It feels like they ask you to emotionally invest in the club and you buy into it and they win four flags but then when they are done it is just gone. [Sam] Mitchell didn't even seem sad to go, he was excited about it," she said.
She tuned out of the trade period after that. Jaegar O'Meara coming in will please her next year no doubt once he gets out there in a brown and gold jumper, but still there will be a feeling of wishing for another Mitchell to still be there in round one.
Jordan Lewis (left), Alastair Clarkson, and Sam Mitchell (right) with Luke Hodge (second from right) in happier times.
Jordan Lewis (left), Alastair Clarkson, and Sam Mitchell (right) with Luke Hodge (second from right) in happier times. Photo: Getty Images
Logically she knows these are probably the right decisions but football following is not supposed to be logical. Its charm is in its muddle headedness.
It's why she is grieving for Mitchell and Jordan Lewis. It's because it was not just one player who left but two. Not just two players but the best two players this year and some of the best they have ever had. It's because they didn't approach the club with the plan, the club went to them.
She has always known football is a business – Buddy did that – but she still thought her club was different, better somehow. And beside Buddy was the one who wanted to go, Clarko didn't tap him on the shoulder and ask if he liked the Margaret River.
This week she realised the accuracy of the platitude of sport as business. She will still follow her club, because that's what you do, but the coldness that informs the clear-eyed thinking of how the next premiership team will be built will also chill her embrace of her club.
Emotionally investing in a club which then makes unemotional decisions about those you are most emotionally invested in does that to your sense of connection.
The club being bigger than the individual is the trite concept that underpins difficult discussions at any club but it is equally true that it is the individuals within a club that make it a club.
Hawthorn has always been the Family club. Until this week it was not so readily apparent there was a Sicilian bent to the notion of The Family.
This week football sent a Corleone-like message to its players and fans "don't be offended it's business".
Indeed his week the Hawks had to provide a reassurance that was redolent of Michael Corleone in the Godfather: "There are negotiations being made that are going to answer all of your questions and solve all of your problems. That's all I can tell you right now."
Ironically the most brutal trade period came only weeks after the premiership win that was the greatest victory for the true believers. It was the premiership that warmed the heart for those who had waited so long, who had hung on and endured. Their emotional investment paid a dividend.
Luke Beveridge draping his medal around Bob Murphy's neck on the podium was the moment that in one gesture spoke to the virtues of the game. It spoke to the bond of club and loyalty and honour. Bob was the player who stayed, who took over as captain when his club needed him.
Weeks later a player who had been in that team, who had in 12 late games this year claimed his spot, left to take a million dollar contract across the country. And rightly, no one begrudged him.
"This is the new normal," a senior AFL person said on Friday, acknowledging that the change has been coming but this trade period feels like a tipping point in shifting beyond the sacrosanct.
"The NRL have been doing this for years and now we are catching up. This is the future of the game – players wanted transportability and they have got it but with that clubs also exercise more transportability. Players can't have it all their own way."
Next year there will be more Collingwood premiership players playing at other teams than playing for them. A full team of 22 premiership players by position could be fielded (named with this article) next year who are now at other clubs.
This has been coming but this year clearly marked amove in the trade period. The names are bigger, the contracts more often a suggestion than a restriction (other than in the end for Bryce Gibbs) and the trade freer.
Just 10 years ago in the 2006 trade period a mere nine players changed clubs.
Two years later it was worse (or better depending on your perspective). In 2008 there were just six deals done. The talk all year had centred on the futures of Jon Brown at Brisbane, Alan Didak leaving and Daniel Kerr being shopped around. But all of them stayed.
Indeed that year Ryan O'Keefe pre-dated Bryce Gibbs by insisting he wanted a trade but then like Gibbs ended up having to walk back in the door at the Swans.
In contrast this year there were 39 deals done. The fantasy football generation love this period but for others the moment fantasy meets reality is when players like Mitchell, Lewis, Brett Deledio walk out the door.
There has always been player movement but there has also always been players whom clubs would not countenance shifting for they were the fabric of the club.
Nick Dal Santo and Brendon Goddard were close to those types of players but they left. Their departures sent a shiver through the Saints but the message of change and modern reality and the club being the better for the moves was sold and accepted.
However the idea of Nick Riewoldt leaving would have been another step again.
St Kilda knew they could never have done Riewoldt.
It would have been thought Mitchell and Lewis were those players but by degrees that idea of the untouchable has now disappeared.
Sally knows her club's thinking was most likely right but the decision still does not sit comfortably. She contents herself that the club will probably have made the right decision because making good decisions is what has made Hawthorn a good club. She also knows that next year she will be there again, but she doubts she will emotionally invest the way she had.
