Delisted With a Year Left: West Coast’s Cold Arithmetic

Another one bites the dust out west, and this time it’s a bloke who only just packed his bags from Princes Park way, delisted by West Coast with a full year still sitting on his contract like an unopened Christmas present nobody wanted. I’ll be honest, when I read the quote about wishing the club nothing but success, I had to put the paper down for a tick because that’s a young fella being a lot more gracious than I would’ve been.

The Contract That Meant Nothing

Now I’m no lawyer, never have been, never wanted to be one, but back in my day a contract meant something. You signed on the dotted line, the club shook your hand, and that was that until the thing ran its course. These days a contract is apparently just a suggestion, a rough guide, something to be torn up the moment the list manager decides your output doesn’t match the spreadsheet. I understand footy’s a business now, everyone tells me that like it’s meant to make me feel better, but there’s something a bit off about chasing a kid across the country, promising him opportunity, and then cutting him loose before the ink’s properly dry.

I went back and had a squiz at how this fella’s season actually panned out and it wasn’t pretty, not enough senior games, not the impact anyone hoped for, and I get that clubs can’t carry blokes forever on potential alone. But there’s carrying and there’s this, cutting a bloke with twelve months of certainty left on the table. In the old VFL days you’d get persisted with a lot longer than that, sometimes too long if I’m honest, but at least you knew where you stood.

West Coast’s Rebuild Reality

Let’s not pretend this is happening in isolation either. West Coast have been through the wringer the last few seasons, bottom of the ladder more often than not, and when a club’s in that position the list staff start swinging the axe pretty liberally because every spot matters for the draft picks and the salary cap room. I don’t envy their list manager one bit, that’s a genuinely hard job trying to rebuild a club that used to win flags for fun, and sometimes the kindest thing long-term is actually cutting bait early rather than stringing a bloke along for two more years of reserves footy going nowhere.

But here’s my grumble, and it’s not really about this one trade gone wrong, it’s about the whole merry-go-round of recruiting that clubs do these days. Every trade period we see blokes shuffled round like trading cards, in at one club, out at another eighteen months later, and nobody seems to stop and ask whether all this churn is actually good for the players or the game. Back in my day you’d get drafted, you’d stay, you’d earn your spurs over half a decade before anyone even thought about moving you on, and there was a loyalty both ways that I reckon’s gone missing from the modern piece.

Spare a Thought for the Kid

Whatever you think about list management and contracts and all that business end stuff, spare a thought for the actual bloke in the middle of it. He leaves Carlton thinking he’s got a fresh opportunity across the Nullarbor, uproots his life, probably drags a partner or family with him, and inside two years he’s out of a job with a club that’s bottom of the table and not exactly short of young talent coming through. That’s a tough gig for anyone, let alone a kid in his early twenties trying to build a career in a game that chews blokes up and spits them out quicker than ever.

And I’ll give him this, the way he’s handled it publically has been first class, no bitterness, no spray at the club, just a classy line about wishing them success which is more than some sooks manage when they get the arvo call. Carlton fans like me will be watching with interest to see whether he gets picked up elsewhere, because plenty of blokes delisted in their prime years end up having a second life somewhere else in the comp.

What This Means For Carlton

From a purely Carlton perspective, there’s not a whole lot of egg on our face here, we moved him on for what I assume were reasonable footy reasons and another club took a punt. Sometimes that punt pays off and the bloke you let go kicks on and becomes a star somewhere else, which’ll give the keyboard warriors plenty to carry on about, and sometimes the punt doesn’t pay off and everyone quietly moves on with their lives. This looks like the latter, unfortunately for the player himself, though I reckon there’s still enough footy in him that some other club down the track might take a look, particularly if he’s willing to go back to state league level and work his way up again.

The Bigger Grumble

What really gets my goat, and I’ve said this before in this very column, is how little scrutiny the AFL head office puts on these contract arrangements in the first place. If a club’s going to offer a two or three year deal, shouldn’t there be some sort of genuine commitment attached to that, rather than treating the whole thing as a rolling audition that can be cancelled whenever the list manager fancies a clean-out? I’m not saying players should be untouchable, far from it, but there’s a middle ground between job security and this ruthless churn where blokes get cut adrift with years still owing.

Maybe I’m just an old fart who remembers the days when you picked your eighteen and you more or less stuck with them, when delistings were rare and reserved for genuine duds rather than kids who just hadn’t quite cracked it yet. The game’s quicker now, the margins are thinner, and I accept that clubs need to be ruthless to compete. But there’s a human cost to all this list management efficiency that doesn’t get talked about enough in my opinion, and this bloke’s situation is just the latest example.

Where To From Here

For the player, I genuinely hope there’s a path back, whether that’s another AFL list taking a flyer or a strong season in the state leagues reminding clubs what he can do. For West Coast, it’s just another chapter in a rebuild that’s testing the patience of even their most diehard supporters, and for the rest of us watching from the outside, it’s a reminder that contracts in this game aren’t worth the paper their printed on half the time. Footy’s a cruel business these days, and this latest delisting is just further proof of it.