Mr Demetriou and co. at the AFL have had a torrid time of late. Since the end of an intriguing trade and free agency period, Israel Folau decided it was time to pack up and go anywhere else but AFL and GWS.
Also, Kurt Tippet’s Adelaide contract emerged as a serious issue involving the murky world of salary caps and third party agreements, and it seems, to the surprise of not many, the Demons may have ‘tanked’ in games to win draft picks.
I doubt the AFL is going to be too concerned by Folau moving on to the rugby codes. Even after he had been paid well above his worth, his body language, statistics and press conferences showed he didn’t have the capability or desire required to be an elite AFL footballer.
He was a gimmick, aimed at getting quick media attention, which he certainly did, and he now leaves before he becomes a blight on the game.
The sagas surrounding Adelaide and Melbourne could potentially be much more damaging. Both of these, if proven to be as bad as is feared, will strike at the very heart of the competition, the closeness of the contest and balance across the board.
The salary cap was bought in so clubs couldn’t simply outspend smaller clubs to win premierships, and the draft so that the clubs who needed the best new talent got it, especially after the failure of zoning.
These are the vary reasons we have a salary cap and a draft – to disperse the youngest and best talent with an aim of an even playing field.
When the AFL created Gold Coast and GWS, they gave these new teams extra salary cap room and a private cattle auction to get the best young talent, and established clubs were suddenly not guaranteed the ability to recruit, or hold on to, the players.
Adelaide and Melbourne were simply trying to beat this situation. Until after due investigation, how successful they are remains to be seen. In any outcome, the AFL has a chance to prevent any future attacks on the integrity of the game in the future.
The first way to prevent teams from tanking, or coming under suspicion thereof, is to introduce an NBA style lottery draft. I am personally surprised the AFL has not introduced this idea already, as they have seemingly taken many other ideas from the NBA, including the increase of the aerial spectacle and the soon to be finished media centre.
The lottery draft works basically like the lotto on TV we all play, it’s just that tickets are handed out for each separate draw, with the winner getting the draft pick that is up for grabs. The lower your position in the league, the more tickets you get. It is not completely random, as the odds for each draw are still favoured towards lower teams getting higher picks.
In a contest sense, this means that teams at the bottom are not guaranteed the best draft picks, simply the highest chance of getting them. The current system is basically the lower you are, the better the picks you get.
In a logical, unemotional sense, this means if you are in the bottom three half way through the season, with no chance of making finals, the last thing you want is to win games and lose draft choices.
By bringing in a lottery draft, and including teams from, for arguments sake, ninth position down, it means there are no guarantees. After the higher picks are gone, it could then go to a normal draft from pick 20 onwards (again, for arguments sake).
This is obviously done soon after the end of the previous season to allow for planning and movement of players and picks throughout the draft and trade period.
I was also trying to think of financial awards that could be available to all teams, scaled depending on position. However I think TV broadcasters have already done that by looking at how attractive your team is to watch.
I think it is going to be very hard for the AFL to do anything to Melbourne, because if Melbourne are found guilty, it means any team who rests players, tries players in new positions, or bloods new players could be considered tankers. Is there even a tanking rule?
What about the third party agreements, and family payments, that have been brought up in the Kurt Tippet case? The payment of family members for services already has a precedent in the signing of Tom Scully’s father as a GWS recruiter.
Simply put, if it can be proven that the non-playing family member would not be employed without the player, both payments are counted as player payments.
Third party agreements are an extremely grey area. The simple mechanics are that a player can accept a payment from a business, as long as the business approaches the player of its own accord.
Under the rules, neither the player nor their club can approach the business and ask them to make an offer. Therefore it is not hard to imagine a world of clandestine agreements, carpark meetings and secret handshakes.
One way in which the AFL could negate this is quite simple. Rather than approving the deal once all the other parties have agreed, a business wanting to offer a third party agreement should go straight through the AFL, and have the AFL represented as a stakeholder all the way through the negotiating process.
This leaves little opportunity for the unwanted gentlemen’s agreement to occur. Perhaps the player should spend a year at the club before third party agreements are allowed, to prevent a third party agreement being used as bait. Other than that, it has proven very hard to monitor third party agreements.
Look at Chris Judd’s deal with the Pratts as an ‘environmental ambassador’ for their cardboard company, Visy. I cannot understand how there was separation between Carlton and Visy when the Pratts are so prominent in both.
As usual, as we look through the window, someone is on the other side fogging up the glass, so we don’t know the full story of who is in the room. Will we ever?
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