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Australian Danny Allsopp, left, fight for the ball with Indonesian Hariono, right, during AFC Asian Cup 2011 qualifiers Group B at Gelora Bung Karno in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan 28, 2009. AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim
Along with most of Australia, I was stunned that Karmichael Hunt has been poached by the AFL to play for the new Gold Coast AFL “franchise” in 2011. It’s either the most brilliant piece of recruiting in Australian sport – ever – or indisputably the dumbest. I am not sure which way to lean.
What is becoming clear, though, with the innumerable defections of rugby league footballers to union and the switching of players from union and AFL to boxing, is that old barriers in Australian sport are tumbling down.
Anything is fair game.
The prevailing belief of administrators and moneymen, erroneous though it may be, is that if you’re tall enough and big enough and catch a ball, you can just about do anything.
There is some credit to the idea.
There was Deion Sanders, of course, who managed to excel at the top of America’s two biggest sports, Major League Baseball and the National Football League, for the better part of two decades.
But equally there was Michael Jordan, the greatest basketballer of all time, who retired when he was at the peak of his career to play baseball.
The experiment was a failure. Jordan never made the transition to the MLB, languishing in the minor leagues, and went back to the NBA with his tail between his legs, chastened and just a little embarrassed.
My own view is that the AFL’s aggressive pursuit of the Brisbane Broncos fullback has been motivated as much by its avaricious desire for publicity and the commercial benefits that flow on from it as much as its genuine belief that Hunt can “cross over”. Judging by the amount of newsprint the story gathered today, they’ve already made their money back.
So why stop at Hunt and rugby league? It got me thinking about what A-League players the AFL might pursue – and there would be plenty of reasons to do so: after all, isn’t the A-League and football the real threat to the preordained might of Australian Rules?
Danny Allsopp seems a likely contender.
Still youngish, at 30, he stands over six feet and, as John Kosmina well knows, packs a bit of muscle. He’s quick for a big man, good with his feet and could be rebuilt as a sort of poor man’s Barry Hall if the AFL’s lab rats got to him in time. There doesn’t seem to be any international future for him with the Socceroos, so I’m sure he’d consider a good offer.
Or his Melbourne Victory teammate Archie Thompson, also 30.
Elastic with explosive pace and a hound’s nose for goal, you can picture the guy in a midfield scrapping and collecting role, and importantly, like Allsopp, he has Buckley’s of making it to South Africa 2010.
Former A-League player Bruce Djite, now with Genclerbirligi in Turkey, is in my opinion the true Karmichael Hunt of Australian football – 22, six feet tall and a big unit – but unlike Allsopp and Thompson, he’s got the world at his feet.
He will make it to the World Cup – and no amount of money would persuade him to defect, especially when he has the potential to make ten times more as a professional player in Europe.
Allsopp and Thompson, however, are ripe for the plucking.
If Hunt can cross over, they certainly can – and better still, the AFL would be driving a dagger through the heart of the biggest football club in the country if they pursued the pair, striking a massive blow against the fastest growing sport in the land.
Football Federation Australia: you have been warned. Start shoring up your defences.
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