At times over summer, it seemed unlikely that Clayton Oliver would ever play football for Melbourne again. “I think everyone had doubts,” Simon Goodwin said on Sunday. “I think even Clayton had doubts.”
His club’s unwillingness, or inability, to be upfront about what was happening, and to speak in normal sentences, only exacerbated the situation. Every time they used the word “culture” – and sometimes they used it four times in the one sentence – the scepticism grew and the situation worsened.
