I think there has arisen two distinct possibilities.
1) Luke Beveridge did not rate Boyd as a talent or a person and was actively looking to trade him at the end of 2015, but showed no sign of it in his dealings with the media about Tom, often singling him out for praise and chiding himself for mishandling him at the end of last year. This private opinion seemed to have changed following Tom's finals series, resulting in Beveridge's emotional state while talking about him.
2)The information was mistaken/exaggerated/something was lost in transmission, and Bev's public opinion wasn't far off culminating in the love-fest at the end of this year (and the "is like a son" comments not that long ago).
I'm not going to comment on which I think is more likely (I'm sure you can probably guess), but it doesn't really matter now anyway, both coach and player seem to be pulling in the same direction.
These are the two clear possibilities, or even somewhere inbetween.
The issue with this continued discussion is that some people have taken it all a little personally. Here is what has happened: Fronk heard this from a source from within the club or close to it. Their motivations are unknown. Fronk's clearly got form for repeating accurate things, and has repeated what he heard. People have blamed Fronk for this.
Can people (not you IM) stop getting defensive and angry about people restating what they hear from others? Seriously... Its really a fight for nothing and is such a classic case of shooting the messenger. I like it when people restate information they hear, good and bad. I certainly dont take it as gospel or as bearing a guarantee though - it needs to be officially verified for it to have that seal. I take it as information that somebody has heard (perhaps even in confidence) from someone they know to whom that information may also have been passed, and at each stage of this process it may be subject to the either misinterpretation or deliberate misinformation. Sometimes, however, it has proven to be accurate and has been information I would not have heard elsewhere.
I cannot credit how happy Pan's posts and reassurance we'd get Boyd during the 2014 trade period made me. Even when the media were laughing at it and said there was absolutely no chance. It was a ray of sunshine in a mire of shit that proved to be true. If we attack people for telling us what they hear then bits of info like that will never be passed on, which sucks.
If you want a filter and to have access to good and fully verified information (sans injury lists) then get all your news off the Bulldogs website.