Melbourne captain Max Gawn has revealed the mental fatigue he endured during another tumultuous season that intensified when superstar teammate Christian Petracca almost left the club, saying the ordeal started to “wear me down”.
The Demons’ off-season was full of turbulence, with midfield star Clayton Oliver also linked to a move to Geelong, even meeting with Cats players and officials during the trade period.
He stayed put, with Melbourne officials adamant he will honour a contract that stretches to 2030, as will Petracca, who it was claimed fell out with senior Demons officials over the handling of his season-ending injury.
Petracca even missed the club’s best and fairest, choosing instead to attend a Red Bull training camp in Austria, with approval from his coaches, and has subsequently made a commitment to being his best in 2025.
But in a revealing podcast interview, conducted on Brownlow Medal day, before the trade speculation around Oliver intensified, Gawn, a champion of the club’s culture that helped 엔트리 steer them to the 2021 premiership, said the walls were closing in.
He said intense focus on the club’s culture, heightened by Petracca’s wish to get out, took the heaviest toll that Gawn could remember.
Gawn said he even felt like he didn’t “trust” everything that was going on at the club.
“The latest stuff with Trac, it’s worn me down and I don’t like that because I feel like I have always been able to handle it, but it’s starting to wear me down,” he told the Empowering Leaders podcast.
“It’s something I’ve always been proud of that I feel like I have a good handle of creating the most successful era and I can see it getting chewed, constantly chipped at and chipped at and I’m constantly trying to defend it.