Melbourne star Clayton Oliver is frustrated with the club over his reduced playing time which, in part, led to his decision not to play in Saturday night’s win over West Coast.

The four-time best and fairest winner trained fully last week and his omission from the team to play West Coast came as a shock to his teammates, who have been pleasantly surprised by his turn around in professionalism in recent months.

This masthead has spoken to three club sources and two sources close to Oliver, none of whom wished to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the circumstances.

They cited three main reasons for Oliver’s most recent frustrations.

First, his reduced game time. According to Champion Data, Oliver has averaged 78.5% time on ground. Four seasons ago, when Melbourne won a premiership and Oliver was one of the most damaging players in the competition, that number was 88.9%.

Second, his form. At the end of last year, Oliver acknowledged that his off-field behaviour and professionalism was not up to the standard of an elite footballer, and has acted accordingly. Two teammates told this masthead they had “never seen him in a better place” in terms of his preparation and physical conditioning. And yet that hasn’t resulted in him returning to be a superstar in the competition.

Third, and perhaps most significantly, Oliver remains deeply frustrated that he was not traded to Geelong, as per his wishes in the build up to last year’s trade period.

Oliver met with several key figures at Geelong, including CEO Steve Hocking and football boss Andrew Mackie and even drove to Rhys Stanley’s farm where he was given a pitch by Stanley and fellow Cats star Tom Stewart.