Dean Macdonald on leave

Who is to say we are a long way above the "industry average"??? maybe we are more aware now because Richmond have made a policy of informing us each time someone goes on "personal leave"....also who is to say that there is not a "review" process in place already....also does not letting a player have time away from the club to deal with personal issues instead of forcing them to stay show that we are very concerned with player welfare. There are just to many factors at play here, and I bet none of us would have an inkling of what is going on, so therefore I do not see how we can question the inner workings of the club or feel the need to scrutinise their intentions from the little we have been given.

That was me and as these things rarely happen secretly (See MacDonald) I am very confident that our tally of "personal leaves" is bigger for what ever reason.

Name names, HK.

Ah, one of those discussions where neither party offers evidence. A delight to read.

Well to my mind we have had Morton, Connors, Roberts, Taylor, MacDonald and Jackson all take leave in the last 2 years and I think there is another I'm missing.

I can recall Austin Wonaemeri? at Melbourne, Krakouer at Gold Coast, I reckon there was one at Carlton. Help me out?

Could have sworn Jackson was on leave for most of 2011!

But seriously, you are going back a lot further than my two years in which case we have a few more on the list as well. Farmer finished at Melbourne in 2001!

You are also not comparing apples and apples.

Ie Tuck, suspended due to 3 strikes and the St Kilda blokes who were suspended for drinking in New Zealand.

Fev was also given a club suspension as were the West Coast blokes and Hooper at Brisbane.

By your criteria we need to add Kane Johnson, Cousins, McGuane and Polo to the list which means we are still miles ahead.

A quote from FJ has been produced where after the draft he described MacDonald as a 'key forward', a description that certainly seems odd to apply to our MacDonald but fits the other one.

The plot has thickened.

It is fast becoming one of footballs great conspiracies.

It is not TBR, so stop crapping on or else you get sent to the naughty Diva corner.

Wow.

I am happy to sit back and respect what the Club has done in giving a young bloke some space for reasons that they all chose not to divulge at this stage. I am also very satisfied that we have an excellent people management structure in place.

The apple was players who were granted personal leave for whatever reason in the last couple of years. The reason is irrelevent.

We are not discussing players who were disciplined for any particular reason like most of the ones you mentioned, nor were we discussing 10 years ago.

The discussion was about our high number of 'personal leaves' in the last couple of years and whether or not the systems in place are working.

I will concede though that you made one relevant and important point.

"If McDonald had not been mentioned in the West you would never have known and it would be a non-issue."

I agree 100% that if an issue is never mentioned then it is not discussed and is by definition a non-issue. Well said.

I'm starting to think I should type more slowly.

I am not going to pretend I've undertaken any kind of statistically sound analysis of players who've had time away from the game. What does occur to me is this: Many of the guys listed in this thread have ended up out of the game temporarily or permanently, whether voluntarily or through suspension, due to personal issues. The only fundamental difference has been that the nature of the issues has blown up publicly before it was acknowledged or addressed by club and player. Cousins: drugs, Fevola: pick your poison, St Kilda: general stupidity and inability to cope with the photos/ the GF loss and life in general, Hall: anger management….etc etc etc.

Does anyone leave room for the possibility that Richmond and/or Dean is being proactive in simply trying to deal with a problem before it gets out of hand, and it's in fact a sign of a strong player welfare focus that we're acting early to either help him deal with it (or help him exit with dignity) before it ends up escalating over time to end up on the front page of the Age?

Many of the suspensions we see occurring every week of the season are manifestations of unaddressed personal issues. As for "industry average" I offer this: We follow Richmond most closely and know the foibles and issues of every player as soon as they cross the Punt Rd threshold. We analyse every suspension/infraction and have access to more information than we do about any other club. Could this heightened awareness explain why several people here think we're so much worse?

Whatever the case, I'm with HKTiger insofar as it's jumping the gun to assume we have a player welfare crisis. Sure, we may. But the status quo has presumption unless there's a compelling case to the contrary, and I haven't read anything here that persuades me we need to be in crisis mode.