I have no inside knowledge whatsoever but from a distance I am inclined to agree with BlueMark. What we may have offered is irrelevant, no? Isn't it what we started with ie current contract levels vs. what we will finish with -

* Whitnall - down from $500k to $400k (or whatever these numbers are)
* Campo - down from $600k to $0k (hehe)
* Lappin - stays about the same.

Looks like we save about $700k cash sense and $400k salary cap sense.

People need to differentiate between re-contracting and list management. There are some who wanted each of these three to go, and I am not one of them, but if the Board decides to keep most / all thenits the re-contracting we have to look at.

I don't have a short memory at all. I am well aware that all those guys signed before the season ended, as did Fev. None of them held the club to ransom.

But I am willing to bet that not many of them will be signing before season's end next time. If I was a player, I certainly wouldn't be.

You are continually missing the point Mark.

I dont care if the club negotiates contracts.
The problem commences when the club states that contracts have been offered and they wont budge on them.
CREDIBILITY Mark.
You can gloss over it with what we lost here, we gained there.
Thats not the point.
The club made a statement and put their credibility on the line.
There was no pressure to do so, they made a conscious decision and didnt have the intestinal fortitude to see it through.

Now, I'm happy to forget about this and move on but dont continually come out crowing about how the club made a stand because by definition they talked the talk but didnt have the guts to see it through.

I'm not condemning the club, I'm condemning misrepresentation.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

I disagree that he would have recieved less if he had waited until year end. We certainly would have looked after him better if he was unsigned. I imagine we would have admitted he was injured and actually rested him rather than play him every week and constantly deny there was anything wrong with him.

We would not have publicly bagged him in the media, because god forbid that would have devalued him!

And if he was uncontracted at seasons end, you could guarantee that clubs would have been after him. Coll would have thrown a heap of money at him to try to get him to walk into the PSD.

So I disagree. If he was uncontracted at the end of this year, I believe it would have been a bigger headache than Whitnall, Campo and Lappin combined.

So we saved ourselves that headache. But I believe we have created future headaches for ourselves by the way we handled Fev later in the year. If I was Fev or any other decent player I certainly wouldn't be signing early.

And you have never ever moved on a 'stated position' BV in your business dealings? Never ever, not even a little tiny bit?

So according to you the club has lost credibility because they changed a minor compoent of Whits contract, even though they kept to the substance of thier stand and held thier ground all thier other dealings with the big name players. As for misrepresentation, if that is the standard you are holding the club and myself to then I expect to see you down in General decrying the Government on a daily basis or at the very least a good mate of yours on here who is a master at it.

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A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" -Winston Churchill

L.M 35-06

I'm not coming down on one side or another but the club saying they won't budge is a tactic rather then an absolute truth. If you give the impression you are flexible, you give the other side a reason to ask for more. I wouldnt read too much into that personally,. People use that all the time even when they are prepared and expect to pay more. I did it myself this year when buying a new home. Its a part of normal business.

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T E A M

I agree that all in all the club did pretty well. We got rid of campo (yay) and whilst I would have traded Whitnall I understand why the club didn't. Unfortunately it's the bits of Whitnalls contract that allegedly got chopped out that upsets people. We were lead to believe that it was the performance criteria that got chopped out.

If this is true, I'd rather have kept them in and payed him more eg $400k instead of $350 on the proviso that he met the skin folds/fitness requirments specified by the club etc. The expected value works out far better for us that way cause there is cliff effect in Whitnall's output when he loses fitness - it doesn't just tail off slowly it drops like a stone. On the othe hand, when he's fit he's a genuine match winner.

Basically a fully fit Lance probably is worth $400k, but a semi-fit one isn't worth $350k. That to me says we should have been making the incentive for him to stay fit massive so that if he even thinks about fast food in the off season it costs him $1000. A $5k fitness incentive isn't going to deter anyone on a $350k+ contact to not go to KFC in the off season ... but how about a $100k incentive.

My offer would have been $300K base, or $400K if he stays fit, and no negotiation. This would have given him the incentive to get into and say in the condition to play the way we know he can.

Very true Buzz but lets not rewrite history after the event.
When we discuss these points, lets come out and admit the club made concessions and compromised.
To continually state that the club stood its ground and didnt make concessions is a misrepresentation in my view.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Yep the club really caved in on the Whits deal

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A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" -Winston Churchill

L.M 35-06

This is more attitudinal than anything else.

We're going around in circles Mark.
Yes I have moved on business deals.
I call it compromise and negotiation.

I dont however run around denying that I compromised.
If I have to misrepresent my position to obtain respect, I dont deserve it in the first place.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

What fiasco? The only fiasco was Fevola himself with his shitful "i'm a gun footballer" attitude that developed after he nailed his contract.

Fev l'm expecting you to do the extra laps at training. Fev I'm expecting you to do extra goalkicking practice.

To the board well done on holding firm on Campo & Lappin and frightening the bejesus out of Fev with a potential trade.

O.K BV from now on I will write "The club stood thier ground on the contracts (expect for a minor bit in Whits)" maybe we could call it the "Whits Clause"

Looking forward to you tearing Little Johnny to bits down in general.

Yes I have my tongue firmly in my cheek

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A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" -Winston Churchill

L.M 35-06

No Mark You should say "The club tried to stand their ground, but compromised".


BTW, If Johnny was doing our contracts, we'd be laughing.

Whats more, if they dont agree to terms, we can shoot them in the back.

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Looking forward to seeing our potential realised.

Hey Bluemark do you have a copy of Whitnalls
contract handy? You seem to know the ins and
outs of it.

What's so minor about removing a performance clause
anyway? Considering the player in question has had major
fitness issues throughout his playing career one would
think that removing such a clause was anything but minor.

unless they were minor performance clauses?

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

Is that a personal attack?

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|♥♥♥♥♥♥| http://www.blueseum.org |♥♥♥♥♥♥|

I call this a fiasco:
The board giving approval for us to re-sign Fev on a 3 year deal mid season, then playing him while he was quite clearly injured, allowing him to be bagged publicly and then putting him up for trade as if it's a fire sale. And then getting NO takers because we devalued the guy that much that only Richmond was prepared to "help us out".

Regardless of what your opinion is of Fev or what my opinion is of Fev (and they are completely opposite), I call the way we dealt with all that a fiasco. If they wanted to frighten the "bejesus" out of him there are other ways to do it. All they did is embarrass themselves again.

not everything is about sheik you know Jar.....

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This type of slight is alien in the more cultured part of the world - Walsh. Its up there with mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun!

Ron "Trust Me I'm a Player Manager" Joseph, should be sent to the firing squad

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You can just smell that fresh Carlton arrogance coming back into the air