You make some really good points. Atu and Phillips are not contentious IMO. They left for opportunity that we couldn't match, and we took advantage of that to clear their salary from our books. JS certainly there is more behind the scenes that lead to his departure, and possibly with AT as well. Whether we wanted them out because of that or whether that made them expendable because of our cap issues we may never know. And the club is on a hiding to nothing about putting out their side of the story. If we say anything like Walsh did this morning we are being mean and throwing the player under the bus, if we don't then the narrative of the player becomes the truth for many.
The only real issue I have is that the club isn't being transparent about all of this (not about the off field but where we are and why things played out the way they did). One thing I think this off season with us has highlighted is the immaturity of the AFL in general when it comes to player movement. In the US players can be traded in contract at a moments notice and the clubs don't always speak to their player before the trade goes through. It's brutal but that's the way the business goes. In the NRL players have full free agency and can sign with a new club twelve months out. So you can spend a full year supporting a player where it is publicly acknowledged they are moving to another club in the next season and know where they are going.
In the AFL both clubs and players can't handle those sort of ideas around player movement. We are kind of stuck between the business of modern professional sport, and the old fashioned player/club loyalty that goes back to the pre-professional era. I think that's why I give credence to the assertion that Cox was discussed as possibly being offloaded but he took that much better than JS and AT. Growing up in the US that was just the brutal side of professional sport.
