It was most disturbing to learn this week that the AFL will be investigating claims that tanking may have occurred in previous seasons.
Really? Tanking? Well, that’s a serious problem!
Read more: Melbourne coach backs players’ integrity
What about incorrect umpiring decisions? Do you think they might be occurring too? I wonder if sometimes footballers get drunk – we should look into that possibility.
And what about staging for free kicks: do players ever do that? I wonder. I mean I guess it’s always possible.
Frankly the news that the Melbourne Demons may have been tanking in 2009 was the most shocking revelation I have heard since the day I found out that Jason Akermanis is quite outspoken.
It hit me like a ton of bricks – to think that professional sporting clubs would engage in underhand tactics in order to gain an advantage was flabbergasting.
It’s great that the AFL is launching another investigation though, since their last investigation into tanking was so thorough and effective that it found that Demons hadn’t ever tanked, even after Dean Bailey practically hung a sign around his neck reading “Will Lose For Food”.
The AFL conducting an investigation into tanking is a bit like a parliamentary inquiry into whether Question Time can get a bit adversarial; an accurate conclusion could be reached a lot faster and cheaper if everyone involved just banged their heads on a table until the bleeding obvious managed to penetrate their skulls.
Maybe it is time for Andrew Demetriou and Adrian Anderson to examine what might be called the underlying logic of the AFL competition.
At the end of the season lies a reward – the premiership. When a reward is on offer, people will tend to try their best to get that reward. This is why football teams try to win.
There is another reward at the end of the season too – draft picks. And again, when a reward is on offer, people will try their best to get it. This is why football teams try to lose.
Somehow this is a bit too complex for the eggheads at AFL House to grasp. Probably because they really do love their draft system and that is fair enough – it is a noble system and it has been excellent at keeping the competition even.
But why keep denying the obvious? As long as there is a benefit to finishing last instead of 10th, there will be tanking. And I say the AFL should embrace it.
Let’s encourage clubs, once their finals hopes are gone, to tank. Let’s make tanking an artform. Let’s revel in that most primal and brutal struggle of all – the struggle of high-performance professional athletes attempting to lose to each other.
Can you imagine the thrill of watching two teams do battle when neither wants to win? The backwards kicking, the deliberate fumbling, the tears streaming down the cheeks of the youngster who, in a panic, inadvertently kicks a goal?
Every round would become a beguiling mixture of hard, tough, uncompromising footballing excellence and surrealistic performance art. Teams striving for victory would be nestled alongside those striving for defeat.
No more would teams have to hide their tanking in shame, meeting in dark basements and shady alleyways to discuss their plans.
They could openly and proudly come out and discuss their tactics for the weekend, about how they hope their midfield can manage to get their hands on the ball second, and how their back six is really coming together as a disconnected group of selfish individuals.
And finally, fans of tanking teams could go along to the game and openly cheer for their side’s failures, urging their heroes on to ever greater feats of ineptitude and stupidity.
The second half of the season need not be a barren wasteland for half a dozen teams and their supporters. It can become a riveting drama, a compelling battle to finish last, with no quarter asked and none taken.
Let’s cast off the chains of conventionality. Tanking happens and is going to happen, so we might as well enjoy it.
It’s time to give the long-suffering fans of the cellar-dwellers something to get excited about. It’s time for all football fans to join the race to the bottom.
graeme
Guest
I take offense that anyone would suggest that Melbourne have tanked at all since 2009. We became so good at losing it now comes without trying.
tonysalerno
Roar Guru
Well said- and a great argument for the battle of the bottom competition.
Australian Rules
Guest
Indeed. Though it would be a travesty to take Shane Woewodin's Brownlow off him.
SportsFanGC
Roar Guru
It is a great achievement Gwils. I should also add to the list by saying "canny recruiting" needs to come into play. Again it sounds like I am harping but Sydney seem to have a great knack of taking unwanted players and turning them into either superstars - Josh Kennedy, or very reliable team players that always put the team first and themselves second - Rhys Shaw since he moved, Ben McGlynn. They realise that it is imporant from a membership and fan perspective to always be near enough to contend when the finals roll around. The culture that young kids like Jetta, Rohan, Reid are now learning they will pass onto the next gen in 5 years time when O'Keefe, Bolton, Goodes have finished up. I also think that Geelong now have something similar down there on the Surf Coast. They have been up and about since 2004 (minor dip in 2006 which did land Joel Selwood) and the senior players are showing the debutants of the past 3 years how to train, recover and play every week. The question remains for the established clubs at the bottom of the ladder - Melbourne, Port Adelaide - who is doing that at their club??
Gwils
Guest
The AFL could declare that all of the success earned by the Demons in the last 25 years would be overturned and struck out of the history books.
Gwils
Guest
But who would come up trumps?
Kev
Guest
What are the AFL going to do? Retrospectively punish teams that decided to go after the carrot that is priority picks that they dangled in front of non-performing teams? Give me a break. Don't blame the clubs for trying to make best of a situation you lot have created and given how Melbourne have gone it seems that while tanking has allowed them to pick up some draft picks, it's left them with a rubbish losing culture that they are still paying for. Tanking or the perception of tanking is going to be there as long as there is incentive to finish lower on the ladder.
brendan
Guest
I personally favor an open first round in the draft where you can select any player with your first pick .Not many people agree with me so perhaps the bottom six teams ie one third of the competition could have an open draft policy.This would negate tanking as it would be pointless unless you were the twelth team on the ladder .
brendan
Guest
it would be a lay done misere.
Gwils
Guest
The no dickheads policy is a winner. To be able to maintain such a policy, with all the players forced to live in Sydney is an incredible achievement.
Gwils
Guest
Brewski I disagree, A big scoring zone of 68 meters is not the answer, it has to be more difficult to score than that for the tanking team. I think soccer has the right idea, making it very hard to score, a team can play 4 or 5 games and never score. A team could play many games of soccer and you would never know if they are tanking I also like the NRL approach, when they kick the ball in the air with those little dinky kicks, everyone stands around watching it, and they let it hit the ground, a team interested in tanking could learn a lot from that.
SportsFanGC
Roar Guru
A club like Melbourne is not going to be turned around by another set of draft picks for finishing in the lower reaches of the ladder again this year. The club was so optimistic about gaining picks for Watts, Scully and Trengrove they all of a sudden expect 3 draft picks to turn around a club culture of failure and senior players just turning up rather than having a ruthless, give-everything-to-win mentality. For a club to be competitive in the AFL it takes several factors with a couple of low draft picks being just one. Picking the right player is essential (think the picks that Richmond took over the better part of a decade particularly the year Hawks picked up Roughead and Franklin and the picks Melbourne took when players like Nic Nat and Dustin Martin were available), great team management with regard to training and fitness (think Sydney and their total lack of injuries compared with St Kilda and Essendon), strong culture and preferably the Sydney model with a no-dickheads policy (think Brisbane doing everything it can to get Fev, they are now another 2-3 years away from even sneaking into the 8), a strong captain and coach and solid football department. Tanking promotes a loser culture to a club that can become very hard to break once ingrained. Purely from strong club culture point of view Sydney has the best set up in the AFL (and I am a Cats supporter!).
Brewski
Guest
Perhaps a scoring zone that is 68 metres wide, that would be weird !.
Steve
Guest
Or I suppose you could codify failure into the rules, and give points for missing the goal.
Gwils
Guest
Sounds like a good idea. you could make the game a turns based game, where you no longer compete for the ball, but say, you have 6 turns each with it, and then when your turn is over, you give up the ball to the opposition. That would bring tanking to a whole new level!
Gwils
Guest
BB That would be like a game of Hearts, where you try and lose all your tricks. When all participants have the same objective of deliberately trying to lose all tricks, then it becomes every bit as difficult as trying to win them all. IN the AFL situation, where two tanking teams confront each other, and both are trying to help the other score, all of a sudden you have a real contest on your hands, and trying to rush the behind to increase your opponents score becomes a real challenge. You can picture a player on the wing, 90 meters from either goal, doing a torp in the direction of the opponents goal to give them a point. You would end up with a score like 0.35 (35) to 0.32 (32). I would pay good money to see such a contest.
The High Shot
Roar Pro
It's been suggested that the bottom two teams could play a tank grand final. The loser gets their own special flag and the winner would get roundly slammed in the media for not trying hard enough and failing to not capitalize on their opportunities.
Ian Whitchurch
Guest
What mds1970 said. Remember, the Melbourne coach who did it has been sacked, and the new coach is trying to dig that team out of the hole tanking put them in.
mds1970
Roar Guru
Any team that tanks digs themselves into a serious hole. I just can't believe that one 17 year-old kid, no matter how talented, can single-handedly turn around a struggling club with a losing mentality. I'd be wanting to win every game possible at the end of a season, even if the finals were out of reach. Nothing wrong with blooding youngsters or trying players in new positions - and if that produces a winning formula, that's great. It would mean the solutions come from within rather than having to build new solutions from without; and by finishing the season on a positive note would build momentum for the following season.
Bee Bee
Guest
Heres a weird thought. If two teams are fully committed to tanking. They would end up kicking the ball constantly through their opponents goal. If both are doing this it becomes weird. Like a parrallel Universe where there are no goals, only rushed behinds. There would be so many rushed behinds a new sport could be created... (Butball.) In honour of the glorious behind. I wonder if GCS and GWS will be playing Butball this weekend? Curious.