The thing that annoys me most is that we have “Football is a business!” rammed down our throats from the AFL and clubs these days and yet as soon as a player makes a footballing/financial decision to change clubs, the line changes to: “Oh, but where is the loyalty in football these days?”
Norf just delisted Sam Gibson who has played 130 games in a row and just came 6th in their Best & Fairest as well. Where is the outrage over that? Oh wait… That’s alright because it was the clubs decision.
EDIT: They also called him whilst he was overseas on holiday to tell him. ■■■■■ club.
A 21 year old kid, gets offered far less coin than what he would by going back to his home state, decides to leave whilst being out of contract.
No he wasn’t. The amount of their players that come from other clubs where they offered more money than the original club is out there for all to see. He was happy for his club to try and bring a player in last year that was still contracted and on better money than his current contract and then were not prepared to pay the price. He’s a hypocrite.
See - I look at what’s behind the story rather than the headline.
First - Let’s look at how Walker’s conversation with Lever was leaked to the media - Private conversations should say private which is one of the problems in todays society - Do you reckon Walker may have had the same conversation with Dangerfield ? But it has never been released publically - The Lever family has made 'oafs’of themselves with their public comments and obviously Lever’s manager has lost control the situation.
Once the conversation was leaked into the public domain, Walker could have hidden behind the cloak of anonymity, but instead was prepared to speak publically as the captain of AFC - And Walker didn’t try to ‘gild the lily’ when he spoke of his conversation with Lever - That’s strong leadership ! Do you think Gibbs would have got more money at Adelaide when he’s in the top 2 or 3 paid players Carlton ? Aceman has posted many times that Adelaide has a strict pay structure, so it’s doubtful Gibbs would get more money at Adelaide, when he is extremely well renumerated at Carlton.
Finally, why shouldn’t Walker be upset that a three year player is leaving AFC for more money which would make him about the highest paid player at AFC - Walker as Captain of AFC wants a committed group that stays together to win premierships - Walker is sending a clear message to the playing group.
They have a pretty strict structure for players that are already there but don’t mind paying a bit extra to get someone to come to them. When Betts went over he was close to their highest paid player at the time and at the time most thought it was a waste of money