One school of thought is that he should be given every opportunity to rehabilitate himself and playing football is part of that rehabilitation process, while others believe he has squandered his opportunities and therefore shouldn’t be given any special treatment.
Having gone through a similar process with the Richmond Football Club and its selection of Ben Cousins, I feel that I have some understanding of both sides of this argument and the position that both the Casey Football Club and the Melbourne Football Club find themselves in with this decision.
From a Melbourne viewpoint, this is strictly a list management decision as Fevola is not their player and he is more than unlikely to ever be in the clubs future plans.
Several years ago Melbourne were aligned with Sandringham Football Club in the VFL . The two Clubs could not see eye to eye on quite a few issues and one of the major problems they encountered was that Sandy wanted to play Senior VFL players in their team while Melbourne wanted to develop their younger players and believed that these Senior boys were restricting the development of their juniors.
The key player in all this was VFL star goal kicker Nick Sautner. Certainly Nick did nothing wrong except kick bags of goals, which had Sandringham competitive as one of the top teams in the VFL and premiers on a couple of occasions.
Melbourne, however, still believes to this day that his presence stifled the development of any key forwards, which is the one area that the club is still struggling with today.
Last year at the NAB National Draft, the Demons identified that they had a lack of tall key position forwards and drafted three of this type of player with Lucas Cook, from Ballarat being their first selection.
This investment in the club's future needs to pay dividends over the next three/five years and the first step is the development of these young boys at VFL level.
Can you imagine how shocked the Melbourne Football Club’s footy division would have been when they had planned perfectly the development pathway for their group only to find out that Brendan Fevola was coming to Casey and creating the same problem that they had when they walked away from Sandringham?
From a Melbourne viewpoint, anything that has the ability to impact the club's growth is unacceptable.
The other side of the ledger is the VFL club, Casey Scorpions. This club has a rich history and in the old VFA days, were known as Springvale. They have embraced the City of Casey, which is a huge growth area, both domestically and commercially.
The club and the area want to be winners and they want people to be interested in their team, so what better way than to have a Coleman Medallist and high profile AFL star who grew up in the neighbouring regions come to your club and attract interest, while making your club a better team.
For Casey, it is an open and shut case. Key full forwards have always been the starring attractions at both the VFA and now VFL level. Added attention means extra membership and certainly crowd numbers, let alone corporate support, from businesses in your region.
The club can also get added support by showing a human side to what has been a very sad story of a star falling from grace.
So, we have two clubs coming from completely the opposite direction with motives that can never match each other.
This is not a problem that the Geelong Football Club or the Collingwood Football Club have ever had to encounter as these two organisations have decided that list management and player development is critical to success, so therefore they decided to stand alone in the VFL competition, allowing them total control of their operation.
It is not surprising that three of the last four premierships have been won by these two teams.
Over the course of the year, I will watch with interest to see which of the two clubs in Melbourne and Casey take more control of this delicate decision.
I can only hope that it does not irreparably damage the relationship between the two and let’s hope that it has a happy ending with player development unhindered from a Melbourne viewpoint while Fev kicks a bag full of goals for Casey, and the region gets behind their man.
The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL and its clubs.
