After an AFL season full of distractions for Essendon, coach Mark Thompson isn't about to be thrown off course at the last hurdle.
There's been coaching dramas, media battles and courtroom departures from business as usual for the Bombers.
Reports of Patrick Ryder testing a get-out clause in his contract to leave the Bombers halfway through a four-year deal could not have surfaced at a worse time.
But Essendon are about to play their first final in three years - and attempt to win their first in a decade - and Thompson won't be derailed by a wantaway player now.
"We haven't talked about it in team meetings or spoken about it at all, to be honest," he said.
"I don't think it will detract from his performance on Saturday. I think he's going to give everything for the team."
The 2013 coach was clearly thinking only of this weekend, leaving Ryder's future in the hands of returning coach James Hird.
"Whatever happens next year, that's Hirdy's problem," he said.
While adamant the issue wasn't discussed, Thompson clearly knew there was a problem, saying the club needed to do some convincing.
"Most clubs are going to lose players in the future with these rules in place," he said.
"I think if you're at a good club, players are pretty happy to stay ... Hopefully we can convince Paddy to stay.
"I think I've answered enough. There is a game on the weekend, something we've been looking forward to for a long time."
Indeed, the Bombers saddle up for a finals match they feel is a year in the making.
Stripped of their finals berth last year as part of the AFL's wide-ranging punishment for the club's part in the 2012 supplements saga, there is a sense of a club set on earning back respect.
Not just to the football world, but inside their own four walls.
Thompson suggested there was a sense of a club repaying its players with a finals appearance.
"We owed it to the players to deliver a program that was capable of getting in the finals, we've done that," he said.
"The players have responded and done their part. I couldn't be happier.
"Well, I could be happier - if I knew we were going to win the game."
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