Allen Christensen had personal issues that compelled him to be in Queensland. Jack Trengove, a premature captain at Melbourne, could seek a clean slate - erasing four years of poor productivity - by crossing Swan Street and moving a few hundred metres.

Adam Cooney is disposable, much like the coach his club has just flushed. He's a badly dented BMW that can be bought cheaply. Levi Greenwood, a fringe dweller barely worth a frankfurt six months ago, will get a much longer and larger contract than Cooney when Levi joins Collingwood.

Amid this rampant promiscuity and club hopping, there's a player no one has mentioned, in part because he's a no-name. But if there's a player who's entitled to seek another club, it's Hawthorn's Mitch Hallahan.

Hallahan played only six games this year. In three of those games, he had 20 or more disposals - including 25 in a losing team against the Swans. He's a tough midfielder at a club that has a fleet of tough and highly skilled mids. So he's remained mired in the VFL, where he's already a cut above, having won the competition best and fairest last year.

Hallahan has every reason to want out. Gold Coast has made inquiries, if not entreaties, but he doesn't want to leave. Not at this stage. The Hawks have created an environment which makes Mitch reluctant to make the hard-headed business decision.

Hallahan's story is noteworthy because it is the exception. It tells us that the best clubs offer more than money or even guaranteed opportunity. Perhaps, to echo the famed Sinatra song, Hawthorn's a place where if you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere. Hallahan might give himself another bite at the Big Apple before moving to Indianapolis. Or he can go now.

Every relationship has its own internal logic. The marriage between Hallahan and Hawthorn - which ought to be rocky - is sound.

The fans are wondering what the hell has happened to their game in this lunatic post-season - the AFL's Octoberfest. They see coaches terminated by players, and players acting like free agents, regardless of their contractual status. They may sense, perhaps for the first time, that the football landscape has shifted abruptly in the direction of the free-market, uber-careerist English Premier League, where the mega contracts don't bind club, player or manager to one another.

It is a cultural shift, and one that fans will, at least initially, find bewildering. The fan reaction, though, ultimately hinges on whether the club can gain from a player coming or going. If the Dogs draft another Marcus Bontempelli at pick No.4 from a swap for Griffen, they will soon get over feelings of betrayal.

The current change of climate has a series of causes: free agency has facilitated player movement, leadership groups have given players more say, and coaches without a track record - which is most of them  - are more easily replaced than two or three gun players. Generation Y wants to negotiate, too, rather than just accepting the coach's orders. "Why should I run back harder, when we have a plus one?"

One way to better comprehend the new landscape is to think of free agency as the game's answer to no-fault divorce in the mid-1970s. Prior to the Whitlam government passing the Family Law Act in 1975, couples had to find compelling reasons for divorce - infidelity, desertion, cruelty and so on. But the advent of no-fault divorce meant you could separate for a period and then a divorce would soon follow, without having to supply or invent reasons.

No-fault divorce, like free agency, was a recognition of individual rights and realities. People who wanted out would get out, one way or another. Libertine California had been the groundbreaker in legislating this change in 1969. Australia, typically, followed almost six years later - a pattern that would be repeated (decades later) with AFL free agency.

No-fault divorce was part of a shifting culture, which encompassed greater equality for women and more socially liberal mores. And once it was introduced, the unhappy wife/husband was - eventually - less inclined to "stick it out" as their stoic parents did.

Free agency has taken a couple of years to shift the market, which had been softened up and liberalised by the recruiting rules for the new teams. In 2012, when it arrived, there weren't many swaps of any description. Brendon Goddard left the Saints for Essendon. Then Buddy Franklin and Dale Thomas took it a step further last year.

This year, the change isn't so much about free agents switching clubs. Rather, the violent shift has been that any player - regardless of his contract - feels like he can get a no-fault divorce and jump into bed with a more attractive partner. The clubs, no matter what Peter Gordon says about the sanctity of contracts (while overseeing the removal of a contracted coach), find it difficult to impede a player who really wants to leave. Player managers know this and will use every mechanism they can to ensure that the trades happen.

I can recall trade periods, back in the 2000s, when hardly anything happened and we spent days chronicling whether Jonathan Hay would fetch one or two picks from North and wrote about trades foiled by failing fax machines. This year, every club has something on the go, in part because the Hawks and Swans have shown that premierships aren't won by drafting alone - you need carefully selected seasoned recruits to fill holes, and the new rules and culture have made this easier.

Players have always moved clubs, and it should also be remembered that there was more movement in the pre-draft days of the '80s - when Carlton wielded the chequebook and players could be bought and sold. The socialised, heavily regulated rules were introduced, in part, to save clubs from their own rapacious instincts and tendency to spend money they didn't have. A period of minimal player movement ensued. This restricted era ended around the time Gary Ablett went north.

While the fear about free agency remains that players will choose rich over poor clubs, strong over weak, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide and even Brisbane have shown that the reality is more nuanced. Ryder and Beams are leaving historically powerful clubs for ones with smaller supporter bases, largely because they feel these other teams offer better environments. North and Port also made the top four, so the real challenge may be for teams that are down the ladder - not necessarily the smaller market teams.

The fans, meanwhile, will overcome their shock. In time, their happiness will hinge on the same old measure: the scoreboard.