TOM SCULLY is probably too young to listen to The Clash.
But if Scully has the British punk band's 1981 album Combat Rock on his iPod, the single Should I Stay or Should I Go might have been getting a decent run lately.
Sure, Mick Jones might have been posing his question to a certain "darling", but Scully's dilemma is essentially the same - should he stay at Melbourne or should he go to Greater Western Sydney?
Wednesday's papers put forward some of the pros and cons for him, and Melbourne, to consider.
The Herald Sun reported Scully had been offered third-party payments that would bolster Melbourne's reported $3 million five-year contract offer. The tabloid's Jon Ralph said Scully had been offered such payments by "businesses that hope he will stay in Victoria rather than join Greater Western Sydney".
Ralph said those payments were "nowhere near the same scale" as the third-party deal with Visy that helped entice Chris Judd to Carlton at the end of 2007.
Although Melbourne coach Dean Bailey and chief executive Cameron Schwab have been working overtime to woo Scully both in the media and privately, The Age's Martin Blake urged the Demons to cut Scully loose.
Blake argued that if the Demons bowed to GWS' pressure and offered Scully an inflated salary they ran the risk of "decimating" the club.
As such, he said Melbourne should not budge from its current offer, which is reportedly $2 million less than what GWS is offering.
If it did so, it would throw its salary hierarchy into disarray with Scully paid more than players with far more runs on the board, Blake said. How would the Demons then keep Mark Jamar, Colin Sylvia, Brad Green, James Frawley and Brent Moloney happy at their next contract negotiations?
Blake acknowledged the Demons had front-ended some of their player contracts recently in the anticipation they would need salary cap room in future seasons to hang onto their young stars.
But where Ralph said this had given the Demons "crucial wriggle room" to both keep Scully and satisfy his teammates they were getting a fair deal, Blake was less optimistic.
"It's hard to see how that strategy can stop a raid by GWS that is backed by the competition's parent body," Blake said.
On that basis, Blake argued Melbourne should take the first-round compensation picks it would get for Scully and run. As Geelong had when Gary Ablett departed for Gold Coast, he said it was possible Melbourne would get two first-round draft picks for Scully - an adjoining report by Michael Gleeson and Caroline Wilson said the AFL had confirmed this would be the case.
Blake said this was the "best deal around" as it would allow Melbourne to keep the rest of its list intact.
We're not sure what Scully would make of Blake's argument. Will it make it easier for him to leave knowing Melbourne is going to be well compensated, that it's not going to have to tie so much of its salary cap up on him?
Who knows? He might just need more time listening to The Clash before he makes a decision.
Malthouse's heart lies at Punt Road
Mick Malthouse will go down as a legend at both West Coast and Collingwood.
When he took over the Eagles coaching job in 1990, he was taking over a fledgling club that had yet to prove it could cut it in the big league.
But within two seasons Malthouse had taken it into a Grand Final, and three years later had led it to two premierships.
In his decade-long reign, the Eagles did not miss the finals once. Instilled with Malthouse's trademark defensive steel, the Eagles would leave a greater mark on the 1990s than any other team, with the possible exception of North Melbourne.
Malthouse's subsequent reign at Collingwood has been no less impressive. He took over in 2000, when the Magpies were at one of the lowest ebbs in their history, having just 'won' the wooden spoon and missed their fifth consecutive finals campaign.
But at the end of his third season, 2002, Malthouse had taken a young Collingwood side to a Grand Final, a feat they would match a year later.
After losing both of those games to the Brisbane Lions, Malthouse rebuilt the list and, as we're all aware - many of us painfully - he delivered the 2010 premiership after five consecutive finals campaigns.
Which is why it was startling to read in Wednesday's Age that Malthouse felt like an outsider at West Coast and Collingwood.
"Externally [at the Eagles], and it was only a feeling and not a shot at the public at all, I just didn't feel that I belonged," Malthouse said.
"Sometimes, even here at Collingwood, I feel like an outsider because I didn't play here.
"Yet, I've walked into the Richmond rooms three or four times in the last 10 years … and somehow I felt at home because I played there (121 games, including the 1980 premiership) and I bled there."
Palmer also in GWS' sights
Given the blanket media coverage of GWS' audacious play for Tom Scully, you could easily forget Scully is not the only player in GWS' sights. And Melbourne is not the only club at risk of losing a potential superstar.
Fremantle is one of the other clubs particularly vulnerable to a Giants' raid, The West Australian reports. The paper's chief football writer Mark Duffield says Freo's contract talks with midfielder Rhys Palmer are on hold until the end of the season, as speculation continues to grow that the 2008 NAB AFL Rising Star winner is in talks with GWS.
Duffield said such speculation had been fanned when GWS chief executive Dale Holmes recently suggested the Giants were well advanced in negotiations with up to four players. Scully, Western Bulldog Callan Ward, Adelaide's Taylor Walker, Port Adelaide's Alipate Carlile and Palmer were "the names most regularly linked to GWS", Duffield said.
Duffield suggested the biggest concern for Fremantle was that the out-of-contract players most regularly linked with Gold Coast last year - Gary Ablett, Campbell Brown, Jarrod Harbrow and Nathan Krakouer - ultimately became Suns.
The only difference this time around is the Giants have two years rather than one to poach opposition players. So the rest of the competition is going to have to live with the rumours and innuendo until the end of the 2012 season.
In short
Former Essendon skipper Tim Watson says Port Adelaide veteran Chad Cornes should play on, The Advertiser reports. Watson, who came back to play in Essendon's 1993 premiership at 32 after retiring in 1991, was impressed with Cornes' performance as a key forward against St Kilda last round. "He is not ready to retire," Watson said. "I'm told he has got his body right, that he is back to feeling as good as he has felt for three or four years physically."
North Melbourne coach Brad Scott told Fox Sports some of his players "got it right between the eyes" at the club review of Sunday's record loss to Collingwood. Scott said the relative youth of North's list was no longer an excuse and players who did not perform would be dropped. “There are things that went on in that game that are football 101, things that an under-12 coach would tell players not to do, so those players were hit up … and taken to task because they are letting the team down," Scott said.
The Sydney Swans have opened contract negotiations with in-form defender Ted Richards, The Daily Telegraph reports. After a slow start to 2010, Richards, 28, has since returned to some of the best form of his career, something he attributes to a more attacking mindset. "One thing I have tried to do this year is … mark the ball a bit more than spoil it, to not just be a stopping defender, [but to] actually try to start the attack from down there," Richards said.
Former Carlton president Ian Collins told the Herald Sun the salary cap penalties imposed on Carlton in late 2002 set the club back 10 years. Collins said the punishment meted out by the AFL - the Blues were fined $930,000 and stripped off a range of draft picks, including the No. 1 and 2 picks in the 2002 National AFL Draft - were too harsh. Collins, who was AFL football operations manager at the time of Carlton's breaches, said the AFL had been guilty of double standards in its handling of salary cap breaches, treating some other clubs' breaches as "minor".
The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL
