Christian Petracca has ‘nuclear option’ to get out of Melbourne after traumatic spleen injury

Christian Petracca will have one final card to play if Melbourne refuse to grant his wish to be traded to a rival Victorian AFL club.

The Demons midfielder is yet to deny constant reporting that he is disgruntled with the club and wants to get out, despite five years remaining on a lucrative contract to stay.

Given he is arguably the game’s best player when fit — or at least within the top handful — Petracca knows heaven and earth would need to be moved for the Demons to entertain giving up possibly their most valuable asset.

And when asked about Petracca’s future at the club in recent weeks, Melbourne bosses, including coach Simon Goodwin and head of footy Alan Richardson, have remained adamant that he would see out his contract.

But if the 2021 Norm Smith medallist is desperate enough to leave Melbourne, as it appears he is, he does have one ‘break glass in case of emergency’ option up his sleeve.

“There is a way that Petracca can depart Melbourne, but it is a nuclear option,” Jon Ralph said on the Mid-Week Tackle.

“He will do anything he wants in the next six weeks to basically get himself outside of the Melbourne Football Club, he’s prepared to watch the world burn if it gets him to the club of his choice.

“Carlton said, ‘No deal, we’re not doing a Harry McKay deal’. Collingwood said, ‘We haven’t got the picks, haven’t got the salary cap, you’re not coming to us either’. They’re the two clubs he wants to play at.

“The nuclear option, if all else fails, it’s the AFL’s grievance process. It’s detailed through the CBA.”

It’s a trigger that no player has ever pulled before and, to exercise the option, Petracca would have to prove a terrible mishandling of his life-threatening spleen injury that required emergency surgery and almost a week in hospital after the Dees’ King’s Birthday clash with Collingwood.

“He’d effectively have to prove a breach of contract and the basis of that would be the club’s treatment of him, of course, with that lacerated spleen. He said (in a pre-recorded podcast released on Tuesday), ‘I nearly died on the operating table’,” Ralph said.

“There are some people, who know a lot, in the industry that say he would at least have some kind of case — that’s an educated view.

“If all else fails, whether that’s public discussions, whether that’s a tell-all interview, he at least has one final throw at the stumps to say, ‘You must trade me’. He’s going to hope it doesn’t get to that, but it is something that he could work through.

“We never thought we’d be in this situation. Who can say if we can get to a grievance tribunal and some kind of forced mediation?”

Ralph says Petracca is so desperate to leave Melbourne that he no longer cares how bad this dispute between him and the club looks.

“Everyone talks about brand. People who are close to him would say he knows the damage he is doing to his brand right now and yet the fact he is so keen to try and be traded, that shows you the reasons that he has — he hasn’t detailed them yet — (but) he has got powerful reasons to get out,” he said.