he wasn’t committed, and was effectively useless in his last year. him leaving was a good thing, for everyone involved
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We all love watching McKenna but I tend to agree with WOB.
Conor in many ways represents what we were like under Woosha’s tenure - i.e. We had an over reliance on individual brilliance rather than a system-based team-focused approach that can stand up under real pressure.
McKenna was thrilling and unpredictable but he was also fairly conditional with his attitude.
Whether in a hypothetical world you could get him to buy in fully to our current ethos under truck, I guess you couldn’t ever rule out but I’d have my doubts.
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re Conor and Razz …
It’s taken me a while to warm to this point of view, but in hindsight I agree. The whole attitude shift from the club (and my own personal attitude) has changed from “please please stay” to “don’t hang around unless you’re 100% fair dinkum”, which is a much happier place for me.
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People mocking his accent, PM telling foreigners to go home, treatment of him when he contracted Covid, the butt of jokes…
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TBF to McKenna…… he got a seriously tough time of it in his final season, I don’t begrudge him after what happened.
The fact that the club didn’t publicly stand up for him after he tested for Covid, and he got in trouble for visiting his host family.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he lost trust in the club and the AFL after it all.
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The club did stand by him, it did not have control of the media.
you may as well say that it hurt losing daniher, fantasia and saad then if your hurt about losing mckenna. because all of those players are superb players fully fit and in flight - could you imagine slotting in a fit and orazio and daniher into our forward line, both who loved the club, rutten etc? theoretically, it makes us a better side. orazio is the one we miss the most and who could slot in seamlessly IF he was fit
but the reality of the situation is we lost 4 uncommitted guys, grabbed 3 long term kids and we’re able to get guys like Peter Wright and Nick Hind in - we dont target either of those if the above stay, we don’t get two of cox, perkins and reid, and Harry Jones probably doesn’t get a opportunity like he did last year
losing those guys was definitely the best thing to happen to this club. we are now a commited, hard working team. the above guys we’re injury prone and not commited.
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The club was publicly silent. flogs in the media demanding he be heavily reprimanded as if he tested positive for drugs.
The President at the time, was deafly silent.
Which led Brasher to say in his opening speech as president, that his job is to protect the club publicly.
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True that, Fantasia got us Caldwell although I reckon we’d still have got him even if Fantasia stayed, Saad leaving got us a bargain in Hind plus Reid (Fark Carlton!). We didn’t get anything from McKenna’s departure but it definitely helped us to have a new fresh start with Rutten, not having to deal with his issues.
You’re a liability, mate.
1 Like
Yep. At that point, the virus was killing people all over the world, but nobody in the media had any care about Conor’s health and wellbeing. It was all his fault the AFL season was on the ropes apparently. The club could have told everyone to fark off and respect his privacy. “We wish Conor the quickest of recoveries and his wellbeing is the most important thing to all of us at this time”.
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Opposition players were more vocal about protecting McKenna than the Essendon Football Club.
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If this doesn’t make your blood boil.
How the fck didn’t the club stand up for its own player publicly, is one of the biggest fck ups we’ve had in recent years.
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The thing that makes me sad most about losing McKenna was not being able to see him embarrass the man on the mark with the new stand rule.
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Still the same pissant club that rolled over for the media when they dragged Conor through the mud. Same pissant ceo and board.
There’s a coffee in Spain where they roast the coffee beans in with burnt sugar. Been a long tradition when coffee was just too expensive.
I think using 2020 as any kind of yardstick for McKenna is incredibly unfair. Between the general dysfunction of the team and the ways COVID impacted McKenna in particular, it is not surprising at all he had a bad year.
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Maybe a comment like this?
Bombers CEO Xavier Campbell told the club’s website Essendon would continue to support McKenna and those around him.
“We are also working with the Department to identify those who they deem to have been in close contact with Conor and isolate them," Campbell said.
“The priority is also to provide our full support for Conor and ensure his health and welfare during this difficult time for him.
“We will continue to provide our full support for our remaining players and staff."
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All those other players we got compensation for. And in all likelihood would have left even without a global pandemic.
McKenna doesn’t fit into either category.
Was that before, after, or from the media conference where he thought it was appropriate to add in some Irish jokes?