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When 21-year-old Western Bulldog Callan Ward weighed up the pros and cons of moving to Greater Western Sydney, he would’ve wrote on top of his list on one side ‘five million dollars, set myself up financially for life,’ and on the other, ‘breaking club loyalty’. Incredibly, indications are he’ll stay a Bulldog.
Being an AFL footballer is an occupation like no other, where the ‘loyalty culture’ has such a grip over career decisions.
Perhaps Ward, who was raised in Melbourne’s inner-west, isn’t the best example, though, as other factors would have come into his decision, such as staying close to home, family and friends.
But he’s still reportedly sacrificing over $2 million in earnings to stay at the club who drafted him at pick 19 in 2007 and he isn’t the first AFL footballer to do so.
Twelve months ago Richmond’s Dustin Martin, who is hot property right now after a blistering start to the 2011 season, turned down Greater Western Sydney’s advances of a reported $3 million over three years.
There’s plenty more too, who I don’t have the space to mention, nor do we probably publicly know about.
However, the point is it is a strange occupation where the factor of loyalty can play such a part in career decisions, particularly given how professional footy has become and in the context of last night’s AFL player meeting regarding their pay share.
How many of us can say they have worked for the one company for our whole professional life? Few, I’d guess. But, of course, being a professional athlete is different to an office job.
Nevertheless, you don’t see AFL levels of loyalty in other sports such as the NBA, or the English Premier League or even Australia’s NRL. Far from it.
So what separates the AFL from the other sports. Why do AFL players put such value on loyalty?
It’s a difficult question to put your finger on.
Certainly, the notion of a one-club player is a traditional one from the VFL days, with players getting their names on lockers and the like, which engrains that culture into the sport.
In a modern context with the AFL’s drafting system, there is an element of re-paying the faith clubs put in players during their development years, which is why Melbourne’s Tom Scully has copped some criticism this year.
Of course, other codes have these traditions and systems too, but AFL footy has never reached the point where loyalty has become devalued. Players changing clubs has never evolved into the norm.
And even when big-name players have swapped clubs, such as arguably the league’s two best players in Chris Judd and Gary Ablett Jnr, they have been able to justify those decisions.
In those two specific cases both players had won premierships at their original clubs. They also moved to be closer to family, which provided the factors required to outweigh ‘club loyalty’ on their pros and cons list.
Some argue the introduction of free agency in 2012 will be the trigger which begins the devaluation of loyalty and that remains to be seen.
The same people probably argued the introduction of expansion clubs Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney would do so, but at this stage that doesn’t appear to have been the case.
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