Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson has painted a dismal picture for Brendan Fevola's AFL future, saying the days of the Fevola-style key forward are as dead as a dodo.
AFL bad boy Fevola nominated himself last Friday for the national draft on November 24, but Clarkson hinted that most clubs would ignore the former Carlton and Brisbane forward simply because modern game plans, and specifically Hawthorn's, do not accommodate his style of play.
"It's not such, for me, the off-field stuff," said Clarkson, referring to Fevola's highly-publicised battles with alcohol and gambling, when asked about recruiting the 30-year-old.
"I think (we're okay) with Jarryd Roughead and (Lance) Franklin and recruiting (Jack) Gunston into the side."
"I think the days of just one key forward and that guy being your focal point (is over)."
"It's very difficult to recruit that type of player."
"Fev's that type of player. If he plays in the forward line he demands a lot of footy and as he should, he's a talented player."
"But I don't reckon that the way sides structure up in their forward lines nowadays is conducive to just having one big bloke down there, you need three or four guys to kick a lot of goals, so I think that's why we'll probably keep going with the mix that we've got."
Roughead, however, is unlikely to play in the first round of the season after snapping his Achilles tendon during the Hawks' Round 12 loss to Geelong.
"His (Roughead's) progression is on track," said Clarkson.
"He had a little bit of a hiccup early," added the coach. "He had an infection, he needed to go back and get the infection washed out, so that set him back, probably four to six weeks."
"But outside of that, the way that he's responded has been in line with all other Achilles injuries that we know of, so we've done a fair amount of research of other people that have had the injuries and he's on track according to those injuries."
"So we'll see how he goes, but he's been such a big resilient fella for us so I'd expect he'll recover pretty well from this."
And, as the Hawks returned to full training at Waverley on Monday morning, Clarkson said the spirit in the side was optimistic, despite the club's dramatic preliminary final loss to Collingwood last September, a result that saw president Jeff Kennett launch a scathing attack on the player's attitude.
"Collingwood were the more dominant side for the best part of 18 months to two years," Clarkson said.
"So for us to serve it up to them like we did, we're disappointed that we fell short but there's plenty of tragedy and triumph in football and unfortunately we had the tragedy this particular year, had the triumph in 2008, so swings and roundabouts."
"But we've got a fair amount of optimism going into 2012, we thought we were able to inject some talented youth into our side last year and we hope they'll progress a little bit more."