[originally posted to The ROAR, June 5th, 2017]
As
with the North Melbourne purging last August, it’s a very untidy subject to discuss. Our hearts want to hang on to the good
times, especially when the player is a Nick Riewoldt or a Brent Harvey, who
seems to have at least one more really good year in him. Our minds look to the
future and realize that the spot that player holds down is preventing a good
young player from playing on the senior side, a player who’s possibly going to
be that superstar’s replacement for the next ten or fifteen years himself.
North
botched the handling of the announcement of the release of its four star
veterans (Brent Harvey, Drew Petrie, Nick
DalSanto, and Michael Firrito) after round 22 last season, but their
sentiments were in the right place. Given the freefall the Kangaroos were in at
the time, and having barely scraped in to the finals in slot number eight and
looking at an out-of-town end-of-season loss at Adelaide, the management folks
at North rightly thought that these four champion players deserved a home
send-off in their final home game, round 23 against the Giants in Etihad. A
warning of less than a week is less than ideal, but the realization that if
they waited, these Shinbone legends – especially the legend, Mister 427
himself – would simply be cast off into the sunset without an opportunity to be
thanked by the loyal blue and white faithful.
And how has that decision worked
out for North Melbourne?
Expected
to be challenging for the wooden spoon
(our “meta-prediction” for this team was 15th), and after
five “warm-up” losses while Brad Scott and company got all the new pieces
figured out, the Kangaroos are 4-2 and the slim possibility
of finals actually exists the very next year after washing the grey out of
their hair. With eleven games left in the season, there are only two games remaining
on the schedule (the Bulldogs in R14 and Port in R17) where they will be
decided underdogs.
They could make finals! The purge appear brilliant in
retrospect, however awkwardly they botched its visuals. It’s not hard to think
that these young players on the roster wouldn’t have excelled with those four
spots still tied up with men in their thirties: Shaun Atley, Ben Brown, Trent
Dumont, Taylor Garner, Nathan Hrovat, Luke McDonald, Aaron Mullett, Kayne
Turner, Mason Wood, and many more young talents who have been regulars in 2017.
So,
what does St. Kilda look at that and think? The Saints are already on their way
up, and they have two players who fit the description of veterans who still
excel but have a shorter expected remaining career than getting to the
championship window will take for their roster.
Leigh
Montagna turns 34 this November, and if he continues to play full time will hit
the 300-game mark next season. Nick Riewoldt is a few months short of 35, and
is not only the second longest tenured Saints player (behind Robert Harvey) but
the second most prolific goal kicker (behind Tony Lockett). He is also the
Saint with the most behinds. (Scores,
that is. Don’t get scatological on us here.)
So,
if they’re looking at North’s situation for guidance, and then look at their
own roster of young stars in the making – Blake Acres, Tim Membrey, Jack
Steele, Jack Billings, Paddy McCartin, Jack Sinclair, Jimmy Webster, Luke
Dunstan, Billy Longer, Josh Bruce, Jack Newnes and Seb Ross are all under 25 –
it would be easy to show the two of them the door.
I
hope they don’t.
And
I’m going to defend Riewoldt in particular the way I would have defended Harvey
in particular over his teammates, though Montagna has done more than enough to
earn defending. But there is something to be said of what we often hear
referred to as “the heart and soul of a team”.
Last
year, the Western Bulldogs lost their
“heart and soul”, Bob Murphy, to injury in round three at the very end of a
tortured loss to the then-defending Hawks. His story became the driving force
for the Dogs as they ran through four favored teams in September en route to a
legendary premiership. The first face we saw on television after the last two
wins (Giants and Swans) was Murphy celebrating on the sideline, and the most
memorable moment of the last Saturday in September was after the game, when
Luke Beveridge gave his medal to “the heart and soul” of the team.
Imagine a 2017 where the Kangaroos won,
say, one or two of those three one-goal games they lost in March and April
because Boomer Harvey scored a goal that his youthful teammates weren’t able to
pull off in our reality. Imagine a situation where, thanks to their “heart and
soul”, the surprising Kangaroos were 5-6 or 6-5 right now, with that fixture I
described earlier coming up in the second half of the season. Imagine a 2017
where, as the Kangas got closer and closer to qualifying for September, the
idea of winning a long-overdue title for the now-450-game “heart and soul of
the team” inspired the Shinboners to pull off a blue-and-white miracle this
September and win one for the legend.
Wouldn’t
that have been worth one more year? Just to see “if”?
Wouldn’t
that have been worth letting him hang around – you wouldn’t have been dragging him back; he planned to return
– just in case you could make such a story happen?
Were
you expecting something to happen in 2017 under our current scenario that would
have possibly been a better story than that? Than even the attempt
to make one last run for Boomer? Are you going to tell me with a straight face
that, from a PR perspective, you think you’re better off even in the long run this way? If you want to
compromise and let the other three go, but keep Harvey on the roster, are you
fearful that people would’ve called you hypocritical for keeping a
freak-of-nature who (I repeat myself) was best-on-ground for the Roos in
round 23 last year, and not the other three? Do you really think that you would
have had to justify keeping inarguably one of the two greatest Kangaroos in
history on the roster for as long as he wanted, let alone for just one more
year? Ninety percent of the new player playing time would have still been there
– it’s not hard to imagine a slightly
reduced workload for the now-39-year-old in season 22 – and the story line
would have been unsurpassed with even their current record.
Now, imagine a 2018 with an
improved St. Kilda, the same roster a year improved from the 2017 team which
(fill-in-the-blank: just missed/made the first or second round of finals). With
one more spot available with Montagna’s retirement (conceivably), they add one
more stud young player to work alongside the “heart and soul”, 35-year-old Nick
Riewoldt, in his 18th season as a Saint.
Is
there the possibility of a Chris Judd ending to his incredible career? Yes. Is there a possibility that the Saints
lose a young gun forward to another club in part because there’s still no spot
on the field available to him? Yes.
Is there a possibility that despite the potential, the Saints have a “Dockers
2016” season and fall precipitously towards silverware, rather than rise
towards drinking containers? Yes.
But aren’t the chances better for
at least the kind of storyline during the season that we fantasized about with
Harvey a moment ago, even if they land in traditional Richmond territory
instead of making the finals? And aren’t the odds better that they’ll have a
team that could take a real crack at September, and a real shot to create a
story for the ages: “The Saints Break The (new) Longest Title Drought in Footy
and Win One for the Skipper – Riewoldt Retires A Champion”?
Put
yourself in St. Kilda’s management’s shoes. Jack Riewoldt has fought his knees
off for you for seventeen years, through a few really good years and a
lot more fairly hopeless years. There are very few men who have earned the
right to control their own destiny to a certain extent, as long as they’re
still earning their place in your top 22.
Brent
Harvey was one of those men. Jack Riewoldt is one as well.
Don’t
you think he deserves to go out on his terms?
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