Age article on Ottens - "a better deal with each passing moment (for Geelong)"

[WA Tiger]

Discusting, never should have happened, that bloke owed us end of story, we stuck with him through injuries caused off field. Regardless of any pay cut, he owed us, this is the worst I have ever felt about a player leaving our club. I don't give a crap about Rodan or who ever else but the Ottens one hurt.

He fell off a ladder and a garden stake went through his leg, we stuck with him and then he played like a rat for two years after that, he shouldn't have even been payed let alone take a pay cut. I can even remember Frawley at the time saying he owed Richmond and that was after Frawley left the club.

Ottens is a dog and I hope he never plays another game.... and I never say that about rival clubs players but this guy is a piece of work IMO

[Infamy]

Losing Ottens was the wrong move, we should not have asked him to take a pay cut.

Can't agree with that, he'd offered us nothing the previous couple of years
He deserved the pay cut, yet was also one of our highest valued players in regards to trade value
The move was the right one, unfortunatly Greg Beck was still in charge of recruiting and his track record speaks for itself

[Tigermonk]

Losing Ottens was the wrong move, we should not have asked him to take a pay cut.

Can't agree with that, he'd offered us nothing the previous couple of years
He deserved the pay cut, yet was also one of our highest valued players in regards to trade value
The move was the right one, unfortunatly Greg Beck was still in charge of recruiting and his track record speaks for itself

Yes got to agree with Imfamy.
Ottens was always injured & his form was never great at Tigerland. His Ruck work was landing at players feet
Seems he just didnot have the right players around him at Richmond to get his game going or the self esteem.  So was best for all parties he move on.
What we got for him went out the door in recruiting

[tdy]

Discusting, never should have happened, that bloke owed us end of story, we stuck with him through injuries caused off field. Regardless of any pay cut, he owed us, this is the worst I have ever felt about a player leaving our club. I don't give a crap about Rodan or who ever else but the Ottens one hurt.

He fell off a ladder and a garden stake went through his leg, we stuck with him and then he played like a rat for two years after that, he shouldn't have even been payed let alone take a pay cut. I can even remember Frawley at the time saying he owed Richmond and that was after Frawley left the club.

Ottens is a dog and I hope he never plays another game.... and I never say that about rival clubs players but this guy is a piece of work IMO

Clubs have a bad habit of treating players like dogs so its no wonder players get cynical and look out for their own interests.
Coaches even publicly say it all the time "footy" is no place for sentiment.  How does that inspire any loyalty.  So its no surprise players go for the money.  I think he did the right thing by himself and probably the right thing by the Tiges too.  We just misused the picks.  Good on him.

People bag guys like Nathan Brown for being money hungry but its not the 70's anymore, its a big professional business.

[Infamy]

Agreed, you can't have double standards
People wax lyrical about there being no sentiment in football yet want their players to remain loyal and sacrifice a higher salary elsewhere. The players know the club will cut them loose the moment its in their best interests, the result of that is players who act selfishly... and rightfully so. For the mid range players good on 'em, the stars know that they'll make more staying with the one club as they can earn double on the veterans list which is why you don't see many guns change clubs.

[Smokey]

Agreed, you can't have double standards
People wax lyrical about there being no sentiment in football yet want their players to remain loyal and sacrifice a higher salary elsewhere. The players know the club will cut them loose the moment its in their best interests, the result of that is players who act selfishly... and rightfully so. For the mid range players good on 'em, the stars know that they'll make more staying with the one club as they can earn double on the veterans list which is why you don't see many guns change clubs.

I have a chuckle everytime I read someone's opinion that a player should have been expected to show some loyalty to his club or he gets lambasted for moving because of money.  Loyalty is a 2 way street and every AFL club moved on from that many years ago.  Loyalty to the club is only a figment of people's memories.

[mightytiges]

What got up people's goats at the time was Ottens said first he was staying and then a few weeks later he said he wanted out. He said it wasn't about money but as soon as he was offered a reduced contract (because he wasn't performing anywhere near the 2001 level he was being paid at) he "changed" his mind. No doubt he made the right choice for himself going to Geelong and he will walk away from the game with at least 2 premiership medallions but when he wanted out of Richmond then he should have been up front about it. He also tried to blame Richmond for his lack of form but his first two years at Geelong were hardly anything to write home about either. Imagine if we had retained Ottens for a further two years meaning 5 straight years of him injury-prone and underperforming. Everyone in the media would have bagged us for not trading him when we had the chance.

To trade Ottens once he said he wanted out was the right idea. We just stuffed up on draft day to get anything decent and long-term in exchange for him  . In hindsight given how the 2004 draft turned out maybe we should have asked for one top 5 pick rather than two first rounders of any kind but everyone was calling 2004 a superdraft like 2001 and in any case it would have been highly unlikely Hawthorn or the Doggies would have traded an early pick as both were rebuilding. Perhaps Collingwood's pick 7 was the earliest we could have got as the Pies did swap it for pick 10 from Hawthorn in that trade week. Getting a Jordan Lewis would've been better than nothing. Oh well just all ifs and maybes and nothing we can do about it now.

[one-eyed]

There's always someone in the media who will find a need to bring Richmond up and bag us even when we aren't even involved. Crawf wrongly says we let Otto go when Otto was the one who wanted to leave.


"What was Richmond ever thinking, letting Brad Ottens leave all those years ago? The Tigers have been desperate for a ruckman for some time, and Ottens is now a three-time premiership player with the Cats.

He gave the midfield first use of the ball, and his bash-crash follow-up work was critical."

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/believe-it-or-not-doubters-three-out-of-five-adds-up-to-full-marks-for-geelong/story-fn76njus-1226155356775

[mightytiges]

It's once again what we did or rather didn't do with the two first round picks that makes the trade now look ridiculous. It just shows at the time how much it was amateur hour within our footy dept. A professional club would've had a list manager and recruiting team analysing the talent and depth of the 2004 draft since the kids where in the U16s rather than leaving it up to just two people with zero resources and hardly a clue anyway to try and guessimate what Otto was worth on the trade table. The 2004 draft was a fairly weak one beyond pick 7. Even ignoring wrongly selecting Meyer and Patto, picks 12 and 16 were hardly a reasonable return for Otto in such a poor draft year. The depth of draft years 2002-4 was ordinary. Compare that to say the 2006 draft where the same picks could have gained us Frawley and Mitch Brown or better still 2007 - Rioli and Harry Taylor. Even 2005 could've got a Jones/Hurn and Max Bailey. Then again we probably still would've gone for JON and Hughes in 2005 as we still had no full-time recruiting staff back then .

[yellowandback]

MT, it is actually much worse a trade than that. I heard the other week from a source very closely connected with the Cats that they first offered Stevie J and James Bartel and we knocked it back!

We wanted 2 first round picks with one pick in the top 10, we ended up with 12 & 16 and we all know what happened after that.

[Mr Magic]

Still vouch it was a very poor decision to move Ottens on, which we effectively did by reducing his contract.
Especially as he was about to enter his prime as a tall.
Good clubs don't shaft their best players but we did and got burned big time for doing so.
Just dumb.

[Owl]

he was pretty far from our best player, he was dragging his heals, he didn't have his heart with us, he wanted success and more money and we weren't delivering either.

[Penelope]

he had also recently had back surgery.

[Mr Magic]

he was pretty far from our best player, he was dragging his heals, he didn't have his heart with us, he wanted success and more money and we weren't delivering either.

What absolute rubbish.
He was clearly one of our best players but was affected by injury.

Ottens was unfairly lambasted by Richmond supporters and there's still a lot of misplaced bitterness.
Another case of too much left to too few and our good players copping the flak for poor TEAM performance.
He's thrived at the Cats because they have good players around him where as we had hardly any.
A very big piece of their puzzle that's now won 3 flags.

[tdy]

MT, it is actually much worse a trade than that. I heard the other week from a source very closely connected with the Cats that they first offered Stevie J and James Bartel and we knocked it back!

We wanted 2 first round picks with one pick in the top 10, we ended up with 12 & 16 and we all know what happened after that.

Oh MY God!!!

That is devistating if true.  Either one would have been adequate reward, but both!!!!