And so ends one of history’s great string alongs
Yep. Having someone so slow they have to crab sideways to find enough space to size up a passable 20m kick just kills your ball movement.
Meanwhile everyone else is streaming down route 1, and blocking up anything obvious.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Clarke were being kept in mind as a mid-season draft option. We know he can perform at the top level, he now has a full pre-season behind him in a professional environment and he knows the Essendon system. Given the strength of our midfield, he had little chance of being selected unless an injury toll started to mount, which probably wouldn’t be high enough to warrant Clarke’s selection until mid-season at the earliest.
Of course, he could join another VFL team or SANFL etc, play a brilliant couple of months and be picked up by a rival club. The probability of this would be low, however, not only because he has some flaws that will always prevent him from being a brilliant player but also because clubs are reluctant to recruit those cut from other clubs.
I saw it as a win/win offering a training position with the prospect of being a SPP to Clarke, even if both Clarke and the club knew the picks would be going elsewhere. It is better for Clarke’s career to train with AFL players than VFL or SANFL and good for the club to have a ready made player to take come mid-season if needed.
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Absolutely. Worsfold must’ve rated having him around the group, certainly couldn’t have gotten that last contract on performance.
Pretty sure he signed that contract the year he was nominated for the rising star and was 8th in the league for tackles per game as a 20 year old.
That’s the cynical view.
The positive view is that he has actually performed ok during preseason but Nick Martin and Tex Wanganeen have far outweighed expectations….
I don’t think the club has him training, and is presumingly paying him for his time, if they had no intention of ever signing him.
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Or our view. Don’t string the guy along have him on the list or don’t. Don’t rerookie or fake with ssp
Yeah and the first 2 or 3 gave a glimpse of a footballer. The last 4 or 5 showed up where he was really at.
Didn’t hate him getting another year.
Two always seemed like overs.
Why is it overs to give a 20 year old rising star nominee a 2 year deal?
Clarke was just a insurance policy if there was no one better will re contract you.
Gives him a little extra coin for what he decides to do next in his future.
Plus knows game plan if a covid top up.
If no other clubs were interested then it’s fair enough for both parties.
I like him Sadly it’s the end.
he just needs to go back and dominate VfL/Sanfl now.
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IIRC you cannot select players in the MSD that you have previously delisted. Rule may have changed, though.
Isn’t he Merret’s mate? Maybe they didn’t want to cut him until he signed the new deal?
The rule changes that broke the game open were the worst possible thing for Clarke. He was the perfect player for the rolling scrum style of a few years ago. He would have been on the coal face feeding the ball out by hand to the players with foot skills. He had the strength and elite endurance to hit contest after contest after contest, along with the attitude to win the ball.
But rotations, manning the mark, 6-6-6 and so on have reduced the number of all-in contests per game. That has pushed Clarke into a more outside role that he’s not suited to.
And so here we are.
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I hate re-rookie-ing…I think the AFL needs to stamp out that BS.
But….
I bet Clarke is grateful he was strung along as a rookie for a year or 2 extra so he prolonged his professional career.
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He had his share of bad luck and bad timing, the rules changes were just one part of it.
If Hobbs hadn’t fallen to us and we took a runner like Sinn or someone instead, we might have kept him.
If Parish had (understandably) spat the dummy at the end of 2021 after one too many games in Worsfold’s forward pocket and asked for a trade, we may have kept him.
If he hadn’t spent the first 3/4 of last season injured when we were struggling for midfielders, he may have gotten the chance to have a sustained run in the middle and make his case.
If Walla’s availability this season wasn’t so uncertain, and/or if Mozzie had stayed around, we may have been less urgent about trying to get another small forward on the list.
Swings and roundabouts. You’ve got to feel for the guy, he worked his butt off for his chance, never failed to give it his all, and he’ll always be remembered for that demolition of Cripps. But the AFL thing just doesn’t pan out for everyone, and it’s not always their fault.
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More to the point, if we were interested in using a midfield setup that included a hard tag, we’d likely have kept him.
We consistently didn’t pick him in the seniors, even after seeing what he could actually do. Our game plan / coaches outlook doesn’t allow for him.
There was no point offering an SSP slot to someone we were consistently reluctant to play.
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He was never just a tagger. we could have played him on ball as a ball winner like he was every week in the VFL but he never got that chance.
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Agree he did pretty well for being played out of position for 90 percent of his games in the seniors.
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Have we made him VFL captain yet???
Whatever people think about him, he had enough ability to stay on a list for 5 years.
Pretty good going if you ask me. I think the AFL average is four years and change.
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