I agree with being annoyed with the players not taking Callan's departure personally. Johnno, Bubba, Darce and Chris have stated a few times that they weren't happy with Nathan Brown's exit. But call me an optimist (you'd be the first one) but I think a new senior coach with (hopefully) some new assistants may be as good as a change in environment for Lakey.
I agree that your concerns are valid and you are correct that we can't just expect things to be fine and dandy but Lake qualifies for the veterans list soon, his currency is very low and any club who would want him will probably ask us to pay part of his salary. When you look at the risk versus the reward it's fairly obvious keeping Brian is a better idea than shipping him off.
It has been widely reported that Ward was offered $450, 000 a year for 3-5 years (depending on reports). Lake is apparently on the same. Now if you have some inside info please share it with the rest of us. If not here are some of my sources...
http://www.theage.com.au/news/rfnews...701047967.html
http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/w...830-1jk5s.html
I disagree with Gmo on this. Lake deserves a chance and if he is no good then bad luck. Trading him now and you would get unders. The guy is a champion full back. Better than Scarlett for the two years prior to this. He gets injured and we say piss off???? No way.
Really good news, hopefuly he will back to full fitness next year and back to playing good footy for us.
Injury is fully to blame, if he hadnt had injuries all would have been good, he would have had a full pre season etc etc...
Its what grew from having injuries and operations that caused the tension and created other issues.
Obviously pressure built on player and coaches due to us starting to lose games and the season not panning out as planned.
Media start to see this and stories are written, true or not.
Snowballed, no injuries , no snowball thus it was due to Brians injuries.
Bring back the biff
I'm glad Brian is staying. Whatever the reason(s) he had a shocking year but let's look at the great years he played before that. Everyone loved him. If he wants to stay and start afresh let's all get behind him instead of bagging him.
Totally agree with this post. Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Lake have three big operations? Plenty of players take a long time to get over one major operation let alone three. No preseason is the killer imo. You are always playing catch up with the players who have had a solid preseason. Possibly throw in some other off-field stuff and you don't have a recipe for a successful season. I simply refuse to believe that a guy with Brian's ability would have lost it all so quickly to the point where he'll never play well again. As for trading him - do we trade Cooney as well on the back of one crap year?