Coaching great Mick Malthouse looks at which players could retire at the end of the season
IT IS the column that has former St Kilda star Nick Riewoldt extremely fired up. AFL coaching great MICK MALTHOUSE gives his verdict on who should retire at your club. Do you agree with Mick?
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RETIREMENT announcements are sobering events.
Whether it’s a teammate or an opponent calling it a day, it defines every footballer’s mortality and sets the clock ticking on his own career.
So far this year five players have retired effective immediately — Hawthorn superstar Cyril Rioli, Richmond’s Shaun Hampson, Western Bulldog Clay Smith, Sydney’s Kurt Tippett and Tiger Ben Griffiths, who took up a college scholarship as an American football punter.
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The average age of these players is just 28. Tippett is the oldest at 31.
It’s too young to be ending a career and making decisions about the rest of your life, but it’s an unfortunate reality of elite sport.
I struggled with retiring both as a player and a coach, and I’ve had a countless number of players in tears in my office when their time came, too.
Football is life when you are in the depths of it, so it can feel like death when it has to end.
Sometimes, though, time belies you.
Shaun Burgoyne, just shy of 36, is in terrific form.
Aside from a hamstring injury, he is still a skilful multi-positional player of high value for Hawthorn.
He plays because he loves the game, not for records, but by playing on he will break several.
He should play on, and the Hawks, in a transitional stage, need him to.
Two other “elder” statesmen at Hawthorn, Jarryd Roughead and Isaac Smith are also in red hot form and should continue.
One of the most significant players in the competition this season is North Melbourne’s Scott Thompson, 32.
He has been fundamental in North’s rise, and hasn’t missed a beat all year.
It was a great contest between him and Lance Franklin on Sunday afternoon.
No one can be a pest like Thompson and the Sydney forward regularly retaliates to his taunts.
Thompson’s teammate, Shaun Higgins, 30, is another in outstanding form.
He could be (and should be) challenging for the Brownlow this year, such has been his impact.
Todd Goldstein, after a disappointing 2017, has turned his form around and is playing like a footballer with many years left in him.
Unlike some others.
Jarrad Waite, Grant Birchall, Daniel Wells, Aaron Sandilands, Liam Picken and Matthew Suckling are all fine players, brilliant players at times, but they have all missed large chunks of recent seasons due to injury, and you have to wonder if their bodies can take any more, or even enough to justify another contract.
It’s a disliked question, but one that has to be asked by the club and the player himself.
North Melbourne is a better team with Waite on the park, and Ben Brown is a better player alongside him.
But he has been haunted by lower-leg issues for a lot of his career and it has interfered with his ability to play out a complete season.
At 35, maybe this is his last incomplete season.
Fremantle, too, is a better team with Sandilands in the middle, but the big man has been prone to big man injuries and managed only 15 games in the past two seasons.
He’s back on the sidelines again, and as the oldest player on the Dockers’ list, this latest injury might be a sign that it’s time to wind things up.
The weekly strain of football takes its toll eventually, until, in some cases, your body almost deserts you.
Geelong has an issue to deal with at season’s end.
While club stalwarts Joel Selwood and Harry Taylor continue to impress, despite putting their bodies through constant punishment, Gary Ablett — the oldest of the three — has up and down form.
He seems to pick and choose how hard he chases and defends when the opposition has the ball, and he has altered the dynamics of the team.
It may well have been a dream combination on paper, with Ablett, Patrick Dangerfield, Selwood and Mitch Duncan in the centre, but I think the reality has become a nightmare for Chris Scott as he constantly tries to balance his midfield.
Geelong is precariously close to sliding out of the eight.
They won three of the four games Ablett missed with injury earlier in the season.
Someone at the club is going to have to make a brave decision about Ablett’s future sooner or later, if not Ablett himself.
It might be a similar situation in Sydney.
The Swans place a high expectation on their superstar forward to kick a handful of goals each and every week, and in most games he does.
But in recent weeks, to witness Lance Franklin berating his teammates for not kicking the ball to him has been an eye opener.
Is it on-ground education on where to put the ball from an experienced forward?
Or has his game become one-dimensional and just about kicking all the goals himself?
It leaves one question in my mind: What does Sydney want from him?
Which would leave one question in Franklin’s mind: Is it still worth it?
He is good enough to continue, but he needs more support, preferably from another tall.
Brendon Goddard is another player sometimes at odds with his teammates.
He is an interesting character, passionately outspoken both on and off the field, and as hungry and mad as any player.
In the game against Collingwood, Michael Hurley castigated him for not doing the team thing and helping him in an aerial contest.
Goddard could have, and should have, provided back-up to his younger teammate.
He is the most senior of a young team that needs to keep moving forward.
He provided invaluable experience and leadership when the Bombers were left with a makeshift list, but perhaps now Goddard has given all that he can give to football.
Demon Bernie Vince, almost 33, is struggling for form, Crow Eddie Betts, 31, hasn’t been the same since Charlie Cameron departed for the Brisbane Lions and West Coast has stumbled since Josh Kennedy, almost 31, was felled by injury once again.
The question of how much value they still bring to their clubs will determine how much longer these men each have left to play.
Luke Hodge’s one-year experiment at the Lions has worked well for both club and player.
His form has been patchy, but his leadership and experience would no doubt have assisted the youngest team in the competition.
Sydney’s Heath Grundy, Carlton’s Kade Simpson, Greater Western Sydney’s Heath Shaw and Bulldog Dale Morris have all won more contests than they’ve lost in the backline this season and are invaluable to their respective teams.
But it’s not always a matter of how good you are playing but how much hunger you have to continue playing.
Not everyone gets it right when it comes to deciding on their future.
Not everyone gets a choice.
But every footballer is applauded at the end of his career for the contribution he made to the game.
The pain is short-lived. The memories last a lifetime.
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