Non sarcastica font:
I think Simpson was a wrong time wrong place kind of thing. Freo - as we know from Bell, and Pavlich's book - had a culture of tail wagging the dog for too long. I remember going along to certain events because Jeff was named as being there. He never showed at any off them. Maybe there were still elements of this when Lyon arrived. It's quite possible he was making sure the club wasn't going back to that and his hard line was just that.
Simpson has enormous talent and it's a shame, but we can't assume they never discussed this openly with him and just kicked him off. Yes he'd sell some tickets and get dockerland fired up, but he had a problem with being in a team, and that would also affect his standing with other players. In the Bs he's King of the Hill, and maybe that's what he wants to be.
