{"id":229999,"date":"2025-10-21T13:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T13:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/229999\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T13:15:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T13:15:10","slug":"melbourne-demons-max-gawn-speaks-on-clayton-oliver-christian-petracca-trades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/229999\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne Demons’ Max Gawn speaks on Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca trades"},"content":{"rendered":"

Melbourne<\/a> captain Max Gawn<\/a> has called for the AFL<\/a> industry to “grow up” a little in regards to the movement of players, following the departures of Clayton Oliver<\/a> and Christian Petracca<\/a> in the trade period.<\/p>\n

The Dees’ 2021 premiership core has been almost entirely unwound just four seasons later, when you include the sacking of coach Simon Goodwin, and players like Charlie Spargo, Luke Jackson, James Harmes, James Jordon, Alex Neal-Bullen and Ben Brown moving on.<\/p>\n

Now, Petracca has departed for Gold Coast, Oliver was pushed out and landed at GWS and the club was keen to move on key defender Steven May, who ultimately ended up staying.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Fed-up AFL warns Geelong to get Smith in line<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Geelong axes premiership hero after 500-day absence<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: ‘Sad’ scenes as fans protest amid global AWS outage<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Clayton Oliver and Max Gawn after the 2021 AFL premiership.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Gawn says he is still great mates with the premiership Dees who have departed and believes it is simply the way the industry works now.<\/p>\n

“Petracca is gone and Paul Guerra and (list boss) Tim Lamb both said from the get-go that he’s a star which he is and we would have loved to keep him, but if we were able to get a pretty good deal, which, three first round picks, that’s Jeremy Cameron-Charlie Curnow type deal, including two (picks) under 10, it’s a really good deal for both parties,” Gawn told Triple M’s The Rush Hour.<\/p>\n

“You’ve sort of got to grow up a little bit in the world of footy that it’s not a forever thing.<\/p>\n

“We had this group of players that had been together for a long time and externally, other clubs didn’t have that, so it’s like geez we’re quite the minority to have had so many players who have stuck together for a long time.<\/p>\n

“It was always going to come to an end and we’ve had premiership players that have moved on like Luke Jackson, James Harmes, James Jordon, these sort of guys, and we’re still very close with them, I’m still very close with Harmesy, still talk to Luke Jackson most days.<\/p>\n

“It’s where we are with footy.”<\/p>\n

Oliver won four best and fairests and was so impressive early in his career that Demons great Garry Lyon stated in 2019 that he could finish his career as Melbourne’s greatest ever midfielder.<\/p>\n

But it has been a tough few years for the 28-year-old, who has battled off-field and mental health issues and his form has fallen away.<\/p>\n

\"Clayton<\/p>\n

Clayton Oliver sat out round eight for person reasons \u00a0via Getty Images<\/p>\n

He has been a headline figure in three straight trade periods given the drama around him, but has finally made the move.<\/p>\n

In fact, it was Melbourne who pushed him out, agreeing to pay as much as $3.5m of his salary through 2030 in order to facilitate the deal with GWS, who also only gave up a third round pick.<\/p>\n

Gawn is excited for Oliver to get a fresh start and hopefully turn his career around.<\/p>\n

“Clayton is probably the definition of wanting a fresh start,” Gawn said.<\/p>\n

“If you looked at Clayton, and I’m as close to him as anyone, you’d go ‘geez a fresh start would be nice for him’.<\/p>\n

“I hadn’t thought about it before it was first pitched to me and then you sit there for a while and you go ‘you know what a fresh start would be pretty good for Claz’.<\/p>\n

“I’m really excited (for him) and I hope he’s sitting there Brownlow night with a Brownlow around his neck and if he changes his luck around as much as that, I’ll be his number one supporter.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Clayton Oliver, Max Gawn and Christian Petracca.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

As for Petracca, Gawn jokingly had less enthusiasm about his move to a Gold Coast team that wants for nothing and is ready to contend.<\/p>\n

“Gold Coast are a chance to win the next 10 (premierships), so I don’t have as much love for Petracca at the moment,” Gawn joked.<\/p>\n

Petracca, along with Essendon captain Zach Merrett, was spotted training at Arden Street with North Melbourne players on Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Does he know where he got traded to? I’m pretty sure he got traded up north,” Gawn joked.<\/p>\n

The Dees received picks seven and eight in this year’s draft and Gold Coast’s 2026 first round pick as part of the deal for Petracca, with Melbourne giving back a few picks to help the Suns match academy bids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melbourne captain Max Gawn has called for the AFL industry to “grow up” a little in regards to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-229999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}