Three-time premiership coach Mick Malthouse has taken aim at young players who cite homesickness as a reason to be traded.
There has been a spike in the amount of home sick footballers who have requested to be traded to a club from their native state, after only recently being drafted.
Speaking to SEN Breakfast, the 1980 Richmond premiership player believes players are using free agency as a passage to force a move back home and that more “resilience” is required.
“Unfortunately I think the free agency has developed into a free-for-all,” Malthouse said.
“I suspect that the going home syndrome grates on clubs and it certainly grated on me; we need to be far more resilient. By and large it has become an excuse, it’s become too convenient and the convenience is after the first contract and I think that is so irrational.
“We tolerate it at times, there’s certainly circumstances when a player needs to and probably has to go home. Tasmanians, kids from the ACT and the Northern Territory have got no-where to go, if they have got home sickness then they gut it out.
“There are extenuating circumstances in regards to players coming home. If there is a real reason then the humanity side of you has got to go up and say, right, let’s let this kid go home.
“When you have sorted it out and it’s got nothing to do with that, and it’s just the fact that all my friends are there and that’s where I grew up, then that’s just bad luck. You have got to gut it out.
“You can be overly soft with young players and that softness permeates right through their whole life and their football life. You have got to be very careful.”
Malthouse says the work clubs do to nurture and develop young players, only to see the fruits of their labour go to waste at another club, is grossly unfair and that “loyalty works both ways.”
“If you take into account the amount of work clubs do, that first 12 months is a growing year and you rarely get anything of them. The second year has slight stability but the third year is when they start to produce and the fourth year you would like to think they would take off,” he said.
“For all the work done by clubs getting that player into a good position to play good footy, I think managers and players have got to come to grips that after two or three seasons, that’s not long enough to justify you’re existence at a football club.”
Jake Lever, Josh Schache and Charlie Cameron have all demanded moves back to their home states during this trade period.