How Cooney and Griffen were forced from the western bulldogs

[bulldogtragic]

It was even more sinister than that.

Griffen, Bmac and Gordon met before the trade period. Meeting ended with Griffen to give an indication after he returns from holidays as to whether he wants to continue as Captain.

Half way through trade the trade period, Griffen informs his manager that he us demanding a trade to GWS. Ryan himself is uncontactable. Bmac meets with the club the next day and after the meeting his resignation is tendered.

And someone else had to drive BMacs car home to avoid the media scrum, I think it was Kingy.

On the Higgins thing. I've said it before, so it can be put to rest: I personally spoke to BMac before the VFL Grand Final, we were never going to match a free agency bid. It was believed we'd get pick 27, which we did. He loved Zaine (nearly) as much as me, and said that Zaine at pick 27 for Higgins he considered a win for the club. We got Zaine at 62 so that was good. Webby needs to come on for his logic to work out. But *!*!*!*!, it's passed the statue of limitations:

- Of the other notable names, he thought he could stop both Minson & Liam Jones seeking a trade. Half right.
- He thought Stringer was the most naturally talented player he'd coached, including certain Geelong players. He said all the conversations from day one to his last day were around Jake lifting his work ethic, not his talent. If he wouldn't increase his work ethic and work harder on the track and in games, then he'd never rise to be the player he could do, it was said. We all know what happened here, BMac got this right.
- We were almost certainly using pick 6 on Peter Wright.

He was pretty flat that day, nothing like his upbeat stuff. But I still don't think he saw the full force if this coming.


Personally, Shocktober was all sorts of shit. While we played some players out of position, Griffen's back was looking bad (and it still is), Cooney was shot and refused to run both ways, Higgins wasn't performing as he should've all be it in the wrong spot - be a leader and do it, Jones was stagnating and Tutt, well why were we trying to retain him?

We got Boyd, Biggs, pick 27 (Webb), 39 (Hamilton), 46 (Caleb Daniel). We snared Zaine at 62. That's four premiership players in the fall out of this. 4 of our 22 premiership players arose from the ashes of this off-season Phoenix. Boyd with 3 goals and really best afield if the GF, Biggs with the wall of Biggs in the last, Zaine with a key knee at GWS and the first goal of ours in the GF and huge first quarter tackles and Daniel with neat precise touch. Plus, we took in Hamling as a delisted free agent to fill in our many list openings (nullified Buddy) and who knows, if we didn't have 26/27 back to back, maybe we could've gone the other way taking Webb and not taking McLean (very important in the GF). So a case can be even 5 or 6 (if McLean) premiership players were because of all of Shocktober and what Cooney says was the clubs fault. Or maybe he's crediting the club with a strategy of securing 5 or 6 premiership players in one trade/draft period.

So all the things that happened, turned out great. Did BMac force the hands of many players, probably. Who cares now. As for Cooney, he looks to me like a jealous ex. He wanted to move on too (he had a contract he could've enforced), but he wanted to show he was better and could do better than us. Remember, his opening 'i wanted to play in the big games, like Anzac Day with big crowds' which he kept repeating... But now he wanted to stay, to honour his contract, to play to expectations, play in front of small crowds and have no blockbuster games. Spare me. So we went and got ourselves super hot, super attractive and now he's rewriting history about not wanting to break up/wanting us back bullshit. If you wanted different things in your footy career, you should've made some different decisions. Yes your knees crueled you, but you could run hard forward for an easy disposal or goal, but not run that hard to defend? No. Own your decisions and be a man, I know that's not the Essendon way, but do it. He sounds more and more like Johnny Fontaine not getting the part in Waltz upcoming war movie... Oh, you didn't get a premiership medal because you made a choice to leave your contract by primarily being a poor leader and that's 'unfair' and now 'what can I do, what can I do?'. 'You can act like a man', own it.