It's not so much made-up stories as hacks allowing themselves to be used by their contacts, in particular player agents, and extrapolating wildly. And it's almost always the News Ltd hacks - Fairfax doesn't waste it's time on beating up rumours. Plus, because there's so much noise around AFL that there's incredible amount of uninformed commentary. Ryder's a free agent (?) and I'm sure his people have chatted to the Swans and half a dozen other teams. That's all it ever was. There's no-one credible saying anything definitive on the record, so you can you ignore it.
On Mitchell, you hear directly from Horse's mouth that he's contracted to the end of next year. End of. I'd be confident the Swans will pay him whatever it takes to him stay - he's a ten-year player, potentially top ten B&F every year.
As I've posted elsewhere I'm getting my AFL news from Titus O'Reilly now. It's only marginally less accurate and makes a lot more sense.
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