IN THE end, it simply wasn’t good for Christian Petracca to continue his stand-off with the Melbourne Football Club and his desire to exit it.
Not good for stress levels, given a mid-October trade deadline would have added another six weeks of intense – and increasingly personally negative – public focus to the three he had already endured.
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Not good for the ego, with not one football club prepared to go even near entertaining all the complex pieces required to transact with the Demons in exchange for Petracca.
Not good for the Demons, not good for his teammates whose support was dwindling by the hour, and certainly not good for Brand Petracca.
While Petracca had every right to do whatever he wanted with his football career in seeking a trade out of the Demons, due to an admittedly valid conviction that the club had failed to act professionally in recent seasons, he did so naively, with a misplaced sense of entitlement, even immaturity.
He delusionally believed his management group would be able to talk to Collingwood and Carlton, his standout preferred outlets, and other Melbourne-based football clubs without any outsiders knowing, caring, or having negative opinions.
Had he properly thought this through in advance, he would have realised that the truly massive deals in the AFL are only ever executed after months and months, sometimes years, of brokering, not merely weeks, and never when there is big doubt over the player’s recovery from serious injury and five seasons remaining of a massive contract.
Petracca brought all this mess on himself.
The physical and mental trauma which followed the horrific injury sustained in the King’s Birthday match against Collingwood, and subsequent deeper analysis of, and reflection on, several incidents of poor player behaviour, and equally poor off-field management of certain club operations, was the catalyst for him wanting to leave.
That he suddenly about-faced his tactics on Saturday night was proof nothing was going to happen before the October 16 trade deadline.
As part of the truce, there is every chance Petracca forced from Melbourne a promise to change behaviour and even off-field personnel. President Kate Roffey has badly handled the Petracca matter, and her interview on SEN last Thursday, where she had intended to convey a message of strength and solidarity, was embarrassing. Former MCC boss Steven Smith now looms very large as her replacement.
CEO Gary Pert will also be under pressure, for the incessant claims and pledges about positive Demons culture which he made on the same radio station late last year have been proven to be hollow, just as they sounded at the time.
Petracca drove this exit plan himself. He was not put up to it by his management firm, Connors Sports Management. In 2021 he and that company ecstatically reached a deal with the Demons through to the end of 2029. In mid-2024, he asked his representatives to explore the market on his behalf.
Robbie D’Orazio and Paul Connors can publicly explain their involvement in the Petracca saga if they so wish, but history suggests that when their firm is involved in a trade request from one of its players from a ground-zero beginning, it gets it done. It negotiated the passage of one of the all-time greats in Chris Judd, from West Coast to Carlton, in 2007, without fuss. In contrast to Petracca, Judd never sought to publicly embarrass the club he was seeking to leave.
The statement released by Melbourne on Saturday night officially committing to a future with Petracca was a convenient, timely end to a farcical saga.
But it is almost certainly merely a temporary halt. The fraying of Petracca-Demons relationships since King’s Birthday simply may not be able to be repaired. Fixture in a resumption of the Petracca trade talk same time next year.
