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For those who have long believed that the suits at AFL House are a bit too full of themselves, the events of the past week will only strengthen that viewpoint.
What else can be made of the AFL’s refusal to concede that its competition has been compromised in the past by clubs not making genuine efforts to secure wins when faced with growing evidence of this rorting of the system?
As the murmur of tanking has grown to a din and then to a roar, the AFL hierarchy has simply jammed its fingers deeper within its ears, unwilling to (publicly) make even the smallest concession when it comes to the T-word.
The AFL’s unwillingness to investigate the issue of tanking is made to look all the more silly when compared to the events of recent weeks.
Three weeks ago, the AFL suspended Collingwood’s Heath Shaw for eight matches after it was found that he had placed a ten-dollar bet on his captain to be the first goalkicker in the Magpies’ round nine match against Adelaide.
At the time the AFL would tell anyone who would listen that it would not allow the integrity of its competition to be compromised, and took a hardline approach to Shaw’s bet, despite the fact that it did not in any way diminish the chance of his side winning, nor did it have any potential to affect the outcome of the match.
One week ago Melbourne’s Dean Bailey was sacked as head coach following a heavy loss to Geelong. At his press conference during the week, Bailey all but acknowledged that in the first two seasons as head coach of the Demons his main aim was to secure high draft picks to rebuild the Demons list, and not to win matches.
If the AFL is serious about ensuring that the integrity of its competition is preserved, then this admission is far more serious than anything Shaw did.
Disappointingly, the extent of the AFL’s investigation into Bailey’s comments was laughingly small.
A phone call through to Bailey was sufficient to reassure the league that he had never coached to lose matches, but this should come as little surprise.
Ask a murderer if he killed a man, and you’ll be sure to hear a denial. Was the AFL truly surprised when Bailey backed away from his comments earlier in the week?
The AFL’s great hypocrisy has been exposed for all to see. It took the hardline approach to Shaw’s indiscretion, but will not pursue the bigger and more damaging issue of tanking.
Maybe AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou can defend the AFL’s inaction on the grounds of semantics. It is correct to say that no AFL team in the past decade has taken to the field with the clear intention of losing a match.
In the strictest sense of the word, no team has ever “tanked” a match in recent memory. But that is not to say that results have not been manipulated in a manner which has undermined the integrity of the competition.
Demetriou is on the record as saying, “We don’t subscribe to the theory that teams deliberately go out to lose or manipulate results.”
However, Bailey has conceded that his efforts were not focused on winning matches, and former Richmond coach Terry Wallace described feeling “compromised” in the coaches box during a match which snared pick two in the 2007 AFL draft.
Wallace commented “I just coached and let [the players] play in exactly the same positions they played in all day.”
Surely these comments amount to manipulation of a result? Is not making every effort to win a match any less of an indictment on the integrity of the competition than intentionally losing?
If the AFL is serious about maintaining the integrity of its competition, it must withdraw its fingers from deep within its ears, and seriously address the dreaded T-word once and for all.
Follow Michael on Twitter @michaelfilosi
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