COME Sunday when Christian Petracca resumes one of the most brilliant careers ever compiled by a player at the Melbourne Football Club, a tumultuous 279-day absence from the game will thankfully end.
But while his broken body – including a lacerated spleen, a punctured lung and four broken ribs – has been repaired in that period, some relationships with teammates and mentors remain fragmented from a messy saga which is still yet to be properly resolved nor publicly explained.
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Even in the week leading into his long-awaited emotional comeback, Petracca opted to make public a decision to sack his management firm, Connors Sports. The move was the culmination of unrest between the parties, and came six months after his failed attempt to leave the Demons for Collingwood or another big Victorian club.
It was also clearly a major elevation of his long-held desire to make the off-field 'Brand Petracca' as powerful as the standing of his on-field one. Image, company endorsements and social media clicks drive Petracca daily, and since late last year, he has empowered Anna Scullie, who is not accredited as an AFL player agent but a dynamic talent and partnerships expert, to work closely on Brand Petracca with his wife Bella Beischer.
Petracca's state of mind was understandably adversely affected by the trauma of injuries suffered in the King's Birthday fixture last year, as well as aspects of the handling of the situation by the Demons both on the day and in the weeks and months following it.
But his decision to seek a trade out of Melbourne, despite in 2021 – the season in which he won the Norm Smith Medal in a Melbourne premiership – using Connors Sports to commit to the Demons until the end of 2029, remains perplexing to many connected to him and the club.
Included in that group were some once-highly supportive teammates who had tired of his attitude, to the extent of not caring if he left.
Selfish and childish were words used at the time by some of those who knew him best. And again, in his eyes and in his defence, he had become justifiably angry and frustrated at several facets of the club's operations, off-field leadership and player behaviour heading his list.
Clubs, including Collingwood, which had weirdly been made aware by Petracca himself of his desire to leave the Demons long before it was public, were obviously interested, but not in the circumstances presented in late August.
Petracca's remaining five years are contracted to earn him between $1.2 and $1.7 million annually. With doubt about his recovery, all clubs baulked at that impost, leaving him to make a hasty statement in early September that he would be staying.
While the seek-to-leave saga was embarrassing for him, it may have led to a sharpening of the Demons' operations, with president Kate Roffey and CEO Gary Pert announcing exits in the following weeks.
To this point, Petracca has had no intent to provide the pubic with detail and context to his actions last year. And obviously that is his right. He has spoken publicly just twice since the torrid events that saw him forced to re-commit to the Demons, but he has deliberately offered no insight.
One was while attending a Penfolds event during the Melbourne Spring Racing carnival, the other as part of a Red Bull promotion three weeks ago. That's the Brand Petracca part at play, and it is clearly still flying.
And now that football resumption is just five days away, there is genuine excitement for the other Petracca brand, the footballer.
It's been a torrid nine months for this four-time All-Australian, two-time best-and-fairest, Norm Smith Medal-winning, brand-obsessed premiership player.
It will be comforting for not just him, but those around him, for football to again be given the chance to do the talking.
