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In only his second year on the job, AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan has a massive challenge on his hands.
The equalisation measures implemented last season are threatening to spiral out of control, with the AFLPA fighting for an implementation of a radical revenue sharing system. Effectively a Robin Hood system, Collingwood Magpies president Eddie McGuire has threatened to quit, if such a system was introduced.
Hawthorn president Andrew Newbold is not impressed with it either.
To go with that, the the game has some real problems in Queensland. Both Queensland clubs are far from stable as a questions surround the depth of both the Gold Coast Suns and the Brisbane Lions.
Both of these dilemmas now confronting the game have posed some serious questions, particularly as far as expansion is concerned. Did the AFL expand too soon – before the game was ready?
Was the Gold Coast area ripe for an AFL team? Had the AFL overlooked the resurgence the NRL had made in Queensland, after the Brisbane Lions had dominated the early part of the last decade?
It is a two-fold problem for the AFL, and McLachlan could well learn with what happened to his games rival code – the NRL.
Hardcore supporters of either code tend to sneer at any comparisons made between them, however, there is a massive lesson for the AFL to take away from the massive storm which ravaged rugby league 20 years ago.
As a born-and-bred New South Welshman and Australian football tragic having seen the game come on in leaps and bounds over the last 20 years, reality tells me my home state is still a traditional rugby league area.
When the NRL dominates the newspapers and the AFL barely gets a look in, what the news never tells us is, rugby league still bares wounds and scares from the storm it never saw coming. The South Sydney Rabbitohs bare witness to those wounds and scares – regardless of their 2014 premiership.
When the New South Wales Rugby League expanded its premiership to 20 teams in 1995, becoming the Australian Rugby League, ARL bosses Ken Arthurson and John Quayle were caught unawares – trouble was brewing.
At the time it was seen as a great moment for rugby league, the game was at the peak of its golden era with the Winfield Cup, and it was expanding its territory, entering a team from Perth (The Western Reds), two new Queensland clubs, South Queensland Crushers and North Queensland Cowboys, while introducing the Auckland Warriors.
Within a couple of months of the 1995 rugby league season beginning, the ARL premiership descended into chaos, as the first salvos of the Super League War were fired. It split the premiership in two, ruined the representative seasons, and in the process, the game lost supporters.
Twenty years later, the collateral damage from the Super League War still impacts on the NRL today, so much so, expansion is baulked at rather than embraced. Hindsight will say the NSWRL bit off more than it could chew, expanding too quickly before it was ready.
Not only that, the NSWRL did not have an adequate plan for what to do once expansion became a reality, or for the financially stricken foundational clubs who were either forced into “unnatural marriages” or killed off in the aftermath of the Super League War in 1998.
Now what does this have to with the AFL? Quite a lot. Much of what occurred with rugby league, began as the result of similar pangs which are now pinning the AFL down. It is worth asking the question, what plans does the AFL have for its expansion areas and clubs?
What plans does the game have for the poorer clubs – into the future?
What will happen if, twenty years down the track, the revenue sharing system is in place, and the millions of dollars given over to the poorer clubs from the richer clubs – the poorer clubs still find themselves, one without a premiership, and two, still in dire straits with mismanagement.
It seems, the plans for equalisation which were sprouted last season, have seemed to hit glitch. Both Hawthorn president Andrew Newbold, and Eddie McGuire, are right to be miffed at being slugged millions of hard earned revenue.
One of the reasons for the outbreak of the Super League War was the belief, especially by then Brisbane Broncos CEO and Super League architect, John Ribot, that there were too many teams, particular in Sydney, to viably sustain the ARL premiership.
Is the AFL premiership too big? Can it sustain 18 teams? If so, why then is there a need for these equalisation measures?
The Brisbane Lions have been reeling for many years and it is debatable as to whether certain measures to help sustain the club (retention allowances and draft concessions) were taken away too early.
In both Queensland and New South Wales, it takes more than winning premierships to keep interest in the game. As much as they help, since the Lions last grand final in 2004, the club has been in a mess, with sharp drops in membership numbers and crowd attendances at the Gabba.
Before long the club was reeling in debt, with mismanagement bringing the club to its knees.
Meanwhile, the Gold Coast Suns have been going backwards, after the promise they showed in 2014, the Suns are barely a shadow of the team which many believed was destined to play finals footy in 2015. They still may, but it is unlikely.
However with queries over the depth and some unwanted off-field dramas, the Suns are presenting a few more Sunshine State headaches.
The Gold Coast has been the cause of many headaches for the NRL, it’s latest instalment, the Titans has barely survived, after its previous instalment, the Chargers/Seagulls/Giants went bust.
The A–League has tried and failed, however the NRL has serious momentum in Queensland and threatens to eat any of its rival codes alive.
The AFL needs to learn from that as well, and this is where the AFL needs to show a bit muscle regarding the academies in the northern states.
This is where Eddie McGuire has got it wrong. He is right to express angst for being punished for being successful, yet why would he want to punish any of the northern AFL clubs for trying to grow the game in Queensland and New South Wales. Even if it means those clubs get first dibs at the local talent – what is wrong with that?
The Suns have a wonderful opportunity to claim an area in Queensland which their rival codes has previously struggled to win.
As far as the Suns are concerned, Rodney Eade is far from a dud coach and is well experienced in coaching a team in a non-traditional AFL state, having coached the Sydney Swans for seven and a half seasons.
This is where Gillon McLachlan ought to thank his lucky stars for The Sydney Swans. They have drawn their detractors over the COLA and the Academy in recent seasons, however not enough credit is given to the Swans for the hard work they have done since that dark year of 1993, to significantly raise the games profile in the Harbour City and NSW. The club is now sustains itself.
While the Greater Western Sydney Giants have started the 2015 season wonderfully well, the jury is still out, with Canberra still looking like a plan B, Western Sydney presents many a logistical problem – the Penrith Panthers, Parramatta Eels and the Canterbury Bulldogs being just one, and the Western Sydney Wanderers being the other.
Ironically, it was former Sydney Swans president Richard Colless who got the equalisation conversation started, asking the AFL similar questions. It came back to bite the Swans, however, he may have been cryptically trying to warn the game of a looming storm.
The other irony was the equalisation conversation was hijacked by McGuire and Newbold, and has it now come back to bite them?
As it seems, the AFL does not seem to have concrete plan for either equalisation or expansion. I hope I’m wrong.
Prove me wrong Gillon. As history suggests, some storms can be avoided.
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