Short Stays, And The Boys Couldn’t Resist The Dig
So Jayden Short had a crack at getting out of Punt Road, didn’t get very far, and came back to a group chat absolutely lit up at his expense. Welcome home, mate — nothing says “we love you” at Richmond quite like twenty blokes taking the mickey the second you’re back in the building.
For those who missed it — and fair enough, it’s been a quiet-ish off-season by Tiger standards, which in itself is slightly alarming — Short apparently explored his options away from Richmond, found the grass wasn’t greener, or at least wasn’t available, and is now back wearing the yellow and black for however much longer. The teammates, being teammates, were never going to let that slide without comment.
The sledge itself
Details are the usual drip-feed you get with these things — a bit of “so how was the move” energy in the group chat, the sort of tongue-in-cheek stuff that gets forwarded around a locker room faster than a bad news story gets forwarded around a Richmond supporters’ Facebook group. Nothing cruel, nothing that’ll end up in front of the integrity unit. Just blokes being blokes, reminding a teammate that loyalty cuts both ways and that leaving is a two-way street — you need somewhere to go.
I don’t know the exact wording and, frankly, I don’t need to. I’ve been around long enough to know the shape of it without the transcript. It’s the same energy as when your mate tries to leave the pub early, gets knocked back by the Uber driver, and has to slink back in to a round of applause. Humbling. Universal. Slightly cruel in the way only people who actually like you can be cruel.
Why anyone’s surprised
What gets me is the bit where people act shocked that a player tried to leave a rebuilding list. Short’s been at Richmond since 2016 — he’s seen the flags, he’s seen the slide, he’s currently sitting in the bit where we’re meant to be climbing back up but the climb looks suspiciously like we’re still finding our boots. You could hardly blame a bloke on the wrong side of thirty for wondering whether his best football might be better spent somewhere with a flatter trajectory and fewer teenagers finding their feet around him.
That’s not disloyalty. That’s just maths. A footballer’s career is short — pun very much intended given the subject — and when you’re deep into the back half of it, you start doing the sums on how many more shots at September you’ve actually got left. Richmond, as it stands, isn’t exactly promising a quick return to finals football. We all know it. The club knows it. Short clearly did some quiet calculating of his own.
But he’s still here
And that’s the other half of the story that deserves more oxygen than the sledge does. For whatever reason — no trade eventuated, the numbers didn’t stack up, Richmond held firm, pick your theory — Short is still a Tiger. And rather than turning it into an awkward, drawn-out saga with him sulking through pre-season like a man serving out a sentence, it sounds like the playing group has done what good playing groups do: taken the piss, had a laugh, and moved on.
That’s actually a decent sign, if you want to read something positive into it, which I’m occasionally capable of doing when the mood strikes. A playing group that can rib a teammate about a failed exit without it curdling into resentment is a playing group that’s probably in better nick than the ladder position suggests. The alternative — frosty silences, passive-aggressive training drills, Short getting iced out of the quarter-time huddle — would’ve been a far worse look and a far worse sign for where this list is actually at.
The bigger pattern
This isn’t the first time in the modern era a contracted Tiger has quietly tested the water and found it wasn’t running their way, and it won’t be the last. Lists get old, windows close, and blokes who were twenty-two when the premierships were rolling in are now looking at a very different proposition. The club’s challenge isn’t stopping players from thinking about it — you can’t legislate against a bloke doing his own research — it’s making sure the group handles it the way this one apparently has: with a laugh, not a fracture.
Say what you want about this current era of Richmond footy — and believe me, I have, loudly, to anyone who’ll sit still long enough — but the inside-the-building stuff still seems to work. The sledging, the ribbing, the refusal to let anyone get too big for their boots. That culture didn’t vanish when the flags stopped.
What it means for Short going forward
Practically speaking, nothing changes. Short’s still the bloke flicking it off half-back, still the one the younger defenders look to when things get scratchy, still a senior voice in a group that’s got more kids than a school excursion. If anything, having this out in the open and laughed about rather than whispered about probably makes his job easier, not harder. Better the group knows and moves on than everyone tiptoeing around it for six months wondering if he’s got one foot out the door.
Whether he’s at Richmond in two years is a different question for a different day, and I wouldn’t bet the house either way — list management being what it is, and Richmond’s rebuild timeline being what it is, which is to say: unclear, optomistic in press conferences, and considerably murkier in reality. But for now he’s here, he’s copped his sledging like a man, and the group’s had its laugh. That’s about as clean a resolution as these situations ever get.
The Donnelly verdict
Look, I’ve watched this club do far worse PR than a bit of good-natured chirping in a group chat. I’ve watched press conferences that needed subtitles for what wasn’t being said. This is nothing — a minor footnote, a bit of dressing-room theatre that tells you the joint hasn’t completely lost its sense of humour about itself, even while it’s lost a fair chunk of its win column.
So no, I’m not here to wring my hands about loyalty or culture or whatever narrative you want to bolt onto it. Short wanted out, the door didn’t open, his teammates had a dig, he’ll live. That’s footy. That’s Richmond. On we go.
