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The findings of the controversial Melbourne Demons tanking controversy has been one of the AFL’s more bizarre performances.
The League remains adamant that Melbourne didn’t deliberately lose matches, nor did they fail to play to their full potential, in the second half of the 2009 season, so that they could hang onto the prized first two selections in the National Draft, where they snared Tom Scully and Jack Trengove.
However, the AFL fined Melbourne $500,000, and suspended the former head of their football department, Chris Connolly, from employment football for 12 months, and former coach, Dean Bailey, for 16 matches.
Currently an assistant coach with Adelaide, Bailey is banned from helping coach the Crows on game day, and from working with any Crows players. At 16 matches, it’s effectively a season ban, and could well cost Bailey his job.
The AFL stopped short of taking draft picks off the Demons, which Melbourne has described as a win.
Like presumably any members of the media and the footy fraternity, I am confused by this decision by the AFL.
The league has said Melbourne is not guilty of tanking, yet has still handed down a hefty fine and two equally hefty suspensions to key figures involved in the football side of the club at the time of the allegations. How does that make sense?
The AFL’s deputy CEO, and the man most likely to replace current chief Andrew Demetriou, Gillon McLachlan, says Connolly, Bailey and their former club are guilty of prejudicial conduct, according to part of rule 1.6 in the AFL rules document.
This applies to a person deemed to have engaged in conduct which is unbecoming or likely to prejudice the reputation or interests of the AFL, or bring the game into disrepute.
You seem to need to have a legal degree, as McLachlan does, to understand this ruling.
We need to know exactly how Melbourne, Connolly and Bailey have brought the game into disrepute, if McLachlan is comfortable they didn’t tank and that such a thing has never existed in the AFL.
I am becoming more bewildered by the minute with this finding.
There’s no doubt that when Melbourne strung a couple of wins together in rounds 14 and 15 of 2009, taking their season’s tally to three victories, their priorities shifted.
They knew they could only win one more match if they were to get the first two picks in that national draft, which they had been banking on all season.
Dean Bailey admitted that he was given instructions to play players in different positions, to experiment, and to blood youngsters, even if they were not ready for the rigours of AFL footy.
It was all about the future and I don’t have a problem with that. Chris Connolly was head of the football department that instigated that move.
Melbourne were playing within the rules. In those days, if teams won four games or fewer for two years in a row, they were given two picks in succession at the next draft. With the Demons getting the wooden spoon for finishing last in 2009, they had the added bonus of securing selections one and two to try and set up their future with the best young talent in the land.
It hasn’t worked out that way, but that’s another story.
The AFL for many years has been keen to the point of obsession on making the competition on the ground very even, which is why the priority pick was introduced and why every club in position to use it has taken advantage of the opportunity.
The two matches on which the AFL concentrated their investigation on were Melbourne’s terrible effort in Canberra when they were barely competitive against an undermanned Sydney side, and the next week, when the Demons snatched defeat from the jaws of victory after the siren against Richmond, a result which Demons supporters actually cheered.
Outside of those two matches, the most famous example of a team making sure it’s tough for them to win was during the last match of 2007, when Carlton played Melbourne for what has been dubbed the Kreuzer Cup.
The winner got four points and would finish second last. The loser received the wooden spoon and the number one draft pick, which would inevitably be used on star ruckman Matthew Kreuzer.
Carlton allowed Travis Johnstone to have 42 touches that day, running around without an opponent, and to this day Kreuzer wears navy blue. Yet the AFL doesn’t believe Carlton were tanking. Right!
How many more examples do you want? Richmond, Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs all earned priority picks in the 2004 draft, so they shared the first six picks.
The Hawks in particular picked wisely, choosing Jarryd Roughead and Lance Franklin, with Brett Deledio a good selection for the Tigers and Ryan Griffen likewise for the Dogs.
The system was there to be exploited and clubs have done that. Supporters in seasons past actually breathed a sigh of relief when they lost late in the season.
If they were near the bottom it meant early picks. There’s no doubt clubs that, even if clubs weren’t overtly tanking, they were being structured to perform at a level where victory was less likely, or near impossible.
The players’ efforts can’t be criticised on these days – they want to win every time they go out to battle, and no doubt they tried their best.
The AFL is to blame for the predicament that Melbourne find themselves in today – half a million dollars poorer, and with the ill-will that sees them responsible for Connolly and Bailey being out of work for lengthy periods.
But remember, there’s no tanking in the game, just prejudicial conduct. Or is that the same thing?
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