There was nothing stopping him.
Ah yeah, Iām sure heās aware of that.
Of course itās balanced out by the need/want to make a stack of money from something youāre clearly uber talented at to set your life up.
But it gives an insight into just how early on his apathy and discontent set in and how he basically didnāt enjoy playing footy at the highest level. Some guys eat up all the training and the footy lifestyle are striving their whole careers to get better and better (like a Lachie Neale), for others itās a drag and they are counting down the days.
I imagine itād be pretty common for guys in their late 20ās kind of get worn down and just try to grind through for a few more years for financial security but to feel that way at 20 is something else.
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Little thing called money perhaps? I wanted to retire at 20 too. 
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Joe came to Essendon at the beginning of the saga.
He was anointed as the next āBuddyā by the fanbase.
He celebrated where possible the positives of being a footballer during a farking ā ā ā ā period of our history, but was critiqued for it. Remember him celebrating a goal and media labelled it embarrassing because he celebrated during a heavy loss?
Geeā¦
I wonder why heād want to retireā¦
What an amazingly brilliant atmosphere for a 20 year old to grow and become a professional athlete inā¦
To top it all off it got better thoughā¦
I mean, it wasnāt like he wasnāt critiqued by media (and by fans) for him having a glass of wine whilst out having a meal.
He (and the club) couldnāt get his injuries under control across three years. Rushing him back only to be re-injured again within a month.
To be fair to Joe, whilst he was at Essendon, he didnāt let the media get to him as much as I thought it would as he lived a very similar life to the one he lives in Brisbane. But it still had an impact on him. It was a given that he was going to get the best out of himself by leaving Victoria and begin enjoying his time in footy.
Heās been perfectly fine since leaving. Having his best years of his career whilst the Victorian media took pot shots from afar for what he doesnāt do.
This is why becoming a footballer isnāt easy. The lifestyle is very different. You go from being a teenager to being an adult very quickly and you canāt do the things your friends are doing whilst being a footballer. Especially if youāre expected to be a āsaviourā. It takes a lot of joy out of the profession which is why you have to be pretty farking mentally tough to make your way through it. And thatās before the club you grew up loving, that your entire family played for, goes through four years of the worst sporting period you could have imagined.
His family say Joe was a different cat (Terryās words). He had to be to wade through that amount of rubbish.
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At the rate he was being paid, āone more yearā is legit. Heās throwing away a million-plus (after tax) by retiring now, but Iād venture heās rather well set-up by now.
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cry me a river.
So 2014. I think we all were over football at that time, and we werenāt in the middle of it.
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Heāll also get paid a fortune to return if needed after 12-24 months off
Yeah most of that is true but I also think he just didnāt like the professional football environment and it would have ultimately been the same kind of career at any other club. I also think his best football was played at Essendon before his OP. Might of even been a lesser career if he started it somewhere else, who knows?
A profession football environment that attracted media attention daily in his first year that has nothing to do with him and continued speculation for a further 3 years?
A professional football environment when you have 4 coaches in your first 4 years?
A professional football environment when you have an overhauled football department and assistant coaches in that time?
A professional football environment when half your team is banned and replaced with over the hill players?
Even if he did give the club time to get itās ā ā ā ā together, by the time they did, they struggled to get him on the park so he could produce his best.
He didnāt need to go through that stuff at Brisbane. He reached a stable club that allowed him to be him and work around him.
Our football club was the furthest away from a professional football environment you could find during the majority of his time at the club. And he still had his best individual year of his career with us. Yet he didnāt like the professional football environment he was in?
I have no doubt he would have gotten more out of himself at any other club because of the outside noise in those early years that was around us. No other club has dealt with that kind of attention for that period of time.
Thereās really no way to prove it though.
There was a lot of outside noise and there was some really hard times and at times it would have been impossible not to be distracted, Covid years included.
However we were a professional football club with a big supporter base with expectations. I honestly think his mind set is more to do with him than his time at the club. Merrett is a good example that you could still meet the expectations of an AFL player if your heart is in it.
Merrett was the outlier.
Not the norm.
In any system, you are going to have successes and failures.
You are less likely to create a professional football environment during the saga or the covid year. Doesnāt mean it canāt happen as Merrett has shown.
Like it or not, we had a football great with us. And didnāt maximise his potential. He is at fault for some of that, but so is the club.
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Not sure he was a great but no doubt he was a great football talent.
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