Ask a hundred 22 year olds if they would rather live in Adelaide or Melbourne.
I'd say maybe 60% would say Melbourne.
That's the problem. The players seem close, the club seems well run and we look like we're going to continue to be successful.
But it's hard to counteract the lure of the bigger city and extra opportunities.
I think this is largely it, were the quintessential vanilla club at present. We'll run, good facilities, big crowds, perform well most years, but don't win, never bottom out, which is all great, but we're not a big Victorian club and never will be. Players are happy here, but they won't feel guilty if they leave, because the club will go on being very good, with or without them. Port don't quite have the issue because the second players enter it's they're indoctrinated into a "us against them" culture, they're the poor younger brother who struggles for everything. Players would feel guilty about leaving them.
We're also a victim of our own good recruiting, the fact that we can lose so many high quality players, lack adequate compensation, and yet still be top of the ladder says that our recruiting and development is very good. Clubs don't try to poach shit players.
The only way we can truly stop this is by winning premierships, that's the main reason hawks were able to hang onto their good players for so long, they won the premiership and then everyone wanted to stay and they won more, now everyone wants to be a part of them.