Forget the good and the bad, this is plain ugly!

News that Carlton and Brisbane are working toward a trade of Fevola for Bradshaw and Rischitelli, apparently if the Lions players can be “convinced” to move, reveals once more the truly ugly end of the AFL system.

No more need be written on the subject of Fevola’s manifold indiscretions.Whether the Blues are well served by moving him on is a moot point. There’s plenty of precedent to suggest a move into a non-AFL-saturated community would benefit Fevola — think Lockett and Hall in Sydney — and a move to a new team environment where there is no history of putting up with his ‘high jinks’ might also work for him.

No, the ugly end of this scenario is Bradshaw and Rischitelli being dragged into the deal somewhat peripherally. Rischitelli has certainly been mentioned in trade discussions previously and there’s a sense that he’d welcome a move back to Melbourne for non-football reasons.

Bradshaw, originally from Victoria, has been a long-term servant of the Lions and provides a very effective foil for Jonathan Brown. Apparently he has made no secret of his intention to move back to Victoria at the end of his playing career. That is, however, a very long way from being an unwitting pawn in some Machiavellian trade deal.

Greg Baum has written an excellent piece on this scenario in The Age. He contrasts the various “loyalties” around AFL, from the fans’ unwavering commitment to clubs’ demands of players. The most telling remark, for me, concerns Hawks legend Don Scott, who, Baum reports, felt more loyalty to the player group than to the club per se. Even this has to been in context, as many will recall Scott standing before an angry Hawthorn crowd and ripping a Melbourne Demons guernsey during the contretemps over those two clubs’ merger plans.

I make no secret of my affection for the Bombers. It’s my firmly-held belief that the Bombers’ great team of the late 90s and early 00s was irrevocably torn asunder by the departure, under somewhat strained and unwilling circumstances, of Damien Hardwick, Blake Caracella, Chris Heffernan and Justin Blumfield within the space of two years. None of the four would probably have been considered a top-flight player in their own right. As a group, the four would hardly have been considered by outsiders as the heart and soul of the Bombers, yet, in the wake of these departures and without the loss of stars, the Bombers went into an almost uninterrupted slide.

I wonder if Brisbane's team fabric could survive the forced departure of Bradshaw and Rischitelli and the importing of the self-centred Fevola, or will it implode as the Bombers’ did a little less than a decade ago.