The naive and easily-frightened will be relieved to know that the "axe" which is often said to be hanging over footy clubs is not real, but simply a metaphor.
Yet imagine for a moment that there really was a large axe ready to dismember under-performing players and coaches, and that during each game of football every participant was not only playing for his/her sporting future but very existence.
In Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining, Jack Nicholson plays a bloke who takes on a job as an off-season hotel caretaker. Before long, he plunges into madness and attempts to hack to death his family with a very real axe.
When Brenton Sanderson arrived at Football Park in the off-season of 2011, he had plenty to be optimistic about at the well-resourced club.
Three bad rounds in 2014 may not make him mad enough to wield the axe, but surely he's thinking about it.
