The AFL is going out of their way to make life very difficult for the Sydney Swans.
The latest development has seen AFL decide to not only phase out Sydney’s cost of living allowance, (COLA) but in any further negotiation with the recruitment of players, the club is only permitted to acquire players who are on the club’s average salary, which is around $300,000.
Gillon McLachlan, you’ve got to be kidding! Why are the Swans going to be compromised in building a good, competitive squad in the next few years?
Let’s be clear, the Swans did absolutely nothing illegal. They operated at all times within the parameters of the salary cap. COLA was an AFL-approved initiative, not something the Swans came up with.
Again, it’s another example of selective policymaking on the run by McLachlan, who seems to listen to the petulant wailings of blokes like Eddie McGuire and other Melbourne-centric commentators who can’t stand to see Sydney do well for such a sustained period.
It’s a decision that is completely disrespectful to the successful programs and strategies the Swans have implemented to try and be competitive in what is, and will always be, a non-AFL state.
Good experienced players don’t come cheap. Great experienced players are even more expensive. At some stage in the near future, the Swans will need another experienced key defender, and you won’t find many, if any, at $300,000 per season. That’s the reality.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Swans won the 2005 premiership, breaking a 62-year drought for the South Melbourne Football Club, which helped to significantly raise the awareness of AFL in a market place the AFL were desperate to get into. As a consequence, people in Sydney got on the Swans bandwagon, became members, went to games, and started watching games on television in record numbers, and Sydney contributed to the AFL’s coffers like never before.
A second AFL team in Sydney would not even have been contemplated if it wasn’t for the success of the Sydney Swans. They were the AFL Commission’s favourite child.
Yet the AFL’s latest spanner in the works to Sydney makes you question how far the AFL will go to try and equalise the competition, punishing a club that has continually had to find innovative solutions to be competitive.
It’s mid-season. Clubs would already have a good idea of the sort of players they’d like to be topping up their squad with next year. They’d have been doing their planning for months, sounding out player managers, which is all part of the due diligence in running a professional club.
It almost feels like the AFL wants Sydney to struggle, to become an average club like so many in Melbourne, and to take their turn at the bottom of the ladder.
Perhaps Gillon McLachlan can tells us his vision for the Swans for the next five to ten years – it would save the Sydney Swans an awful lot of time and energy.
EddyJ
Guest
It does seem unfair, and counter-intuitive. You're right, the Swans, as far as we know, have done nothing wrong, and seems odd to be punished for no misdemeanours. But there lies the problem. There's probably something behind the scenes that we don't know about – salary cap breaches, unfair poaching (Paddy Ryder), or something else, which the AFL might be sweeping under that table, and hoping that through this strange sanction, that people in the industry might be satisfied with this, and not dig any further. I'm not suggesting that any wrong doing has occurred, but there has to be some reason behind this weird situation which, on the surface, looks like a punitive action, and far beyond simply a reduction of the COLA. The AFL has a habit of hiding or sweeping things under the carpet – drugs at Essendon, betting scandals, booze, cocaine at Gold Coast, ice at West Coast. There might be more to this than meets the eye.