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Hawks' dominance shows Victorian hypocrisy

24th July, 2015
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Roar Guru
24th July, 2015
157
3950 Reads

It’s time the AFL and its media (particularly in Melbourne) got real with New South Wales and Queensland.

Presently the game – nationwide – has never had a better opportunity to cement itself, yet challenging that is imbalanced media coverage and AFL administrators forever changing the rules for what expansion clubs can and cannot do.

Yes, you can have a salary cap concessions, just don’t win premierships. Yes, you can have academies, just don’t produce star players.

It is sending mixed messages. Look back over the last 15 years and read the rhetoric, particularly over the Brisbane Lions and the Sydney Swans. At times it has been nothing but hypocritical.

The berating of the Gold Coast Suns by News Limited’s Mark Robinson, regardless of their off-field woes, was needed like a hole in the head – especially when neither the AFL nor NRL are winning the battle for the glitter strip.

It says a lot when Port Adelaide supremo David Koch openly laments the sentiment – take the ‘V’ out of the AFL.

It would nice to believe that the 8 of the last 15 grand finals featuring either the Brisbane Lions or the Sydney Swans were celebrated, with those clubs being victorious on five occasions, but no – it hasn’t read that way.

After Brisbane went back-to-back in 2002, Victorian club bosses and the Melbourne AFL media were quick to pounce on the club’s draft and salary cap concessions.

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Collingwood President Eddie McGuire feared no one could stop the rampaging Lions (his Magpies had an opportunity to knock them off in 2002 and 2003), and then-Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy (who was Brisbane’s first victim) said the AFL had created a monster.

It’s ironic Sheedy would end up being the inaugural coach of the Greater Western Sydney Giants – a monster potentially bigger than the Lions ever were.

It was said that the AFL, via salary-cap concessions, had gift-wrapped three flags to the Lions by creating a ‘super-team’.

Leigh Matthews didn’t have to do anything.

Funnily enough, after the Swans’ two epic grand finals against West Coast Sydney was not seen as the being as big a threat and were foolishly underestimated. The Swans were supposed to fade away after 2006.

And then 2012 happened. Sydney upstaged a red hot favourite Hawthorn to win the premiership.

Unbeknownst to the Swans, recruiting Kurt Tippett on the back of it was a big ‘no-no’. Why? Because they have the Cost of Living Allowance.

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A year later, an even bigger ‘no-no’. Pinching Lance Franklin from under the noses of the Greater Western Sydney Giants and the AFL was the wrong thing. Buddy was supposed to be a Giant.

It was mass hysteria. It was the Brisbane Lions all over again.

Even the Lions joined in because in principle, if they lost their salary cap concessions, the Swans should lose theirs too – fair enough. Yet the war waged on the Swans academy, is the same war being waged on the Lions.

The COLA will be gone by 2017 but in the aftermath, it raises questions.

Why is it that no one asks about how the unstoppable Hawks were able to recruit Brian Lake from the Western Bulldogs, who was then, the best player at his club?

Why were the Hawks, on the back of going back-to-back, able to recruit James Frawley – arguably Melbourne’s best player? Meanwhile, it was an outrage the Swans could recruit Isaac Heeney from their academy?

So the Hawks could improve their list and go on their winning way, and the Swans couldn’t and had to endure an unfair trade-ban?

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It also seems forgotten Hawthorn recruited Shaun Burgoyne (a premiership player at Port Adelaide) after their 2008 premiership.

Hawthorn have appeared in four of the last six grand finals, winning three of them and they have been able to do what they like, yet Sydney have been dictated to.

If the difference is, the Swans had the Cost of Living Allowance and the Hawks didn’t, then why is it that as soon as any club from the northern states is successful there are problems?

What will be the rhetoric once the Greater Western Sydney Giants win their first premiership (by 2017, it is not out of the question), and get on a Lions or Hawthorn type of roll? The much vaunted player raid the Giants are expected to suffer shows no signs of happening as yet.

Eddie McGuire has already expressed his belief that the Giants are just expecting everything to be handed to them. That is why it defies belief the Giants supported the Swans trade ban – ironically, McGuire did not.

There was a better and fairer way to phase to the COLA out, and the AFL did not do it.

That is why all the talk after Hawthorn’s 89-point thumping of Sydney, of the Swans having “holes everywhere” while the Hawks have the complete team, was bizarre.

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It is bizarre that existential facts go missing. Since 2006, Victorian clubs have dominated the premiership. Hawthorn and Collingwood, two of the AFL’s wealthiest clubs, have been up there dominating or threatening to dominate.

Geelong and Hawthorn have won six of the last eight flags, with the Magpies pinching one. St Kilda, the poorest club in the AFL, played off in back-to-back grand finals.

Only three interstate clubs have appeared in grand finals, starting with Port Adelaide in 2007. Apart from Sydney in 2012 and 2014, Fremantle were the only other interstate side.

Maybe that is the problem with the Swans flag – it stands out like a sore thumb.

The Hawks should have their ‘three-peat’ already instead of everyone dreaming it up for them – how cruel of Sydney to do that – damn those Swans!

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