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Gillon McLachlan must be more honest about the future of AFLW

AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan launches the new Women's AFL league competition, at a launch in Melbourne, Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017. (AAP Image/Joe Castro)
Roar Guru
6th August, 2018
24

Gillon McLachlan has a communication problem. This seems obvious after news emerged that the 2019 AFLW season is likely going to be the same length as 2018 — but with one week of regular season removed to make way for a qualifying final.

As I wrote in my wishlist for 2019, a 44-week offseason is real stretch for most athletes, and this recent explosion of social media displeasure from senior players and figures is alarming only in the sense that the AFL apparently didn’t see it coming.

Gil’s communications problem stems from the fact that the AFL does have some solid reasons for trying to align the AFLW season the way that it is, but the AFL is reluctant to talk about any of these issues openly for a combination of commercial and social reasons.

With the women’s league, the AFL is attempting to pursue a strategy of maximum visibility within a limited window. That limited window lies in the space between the Australian Open tennis and the beginning of the AFL regular season.

The primary reason why the AFL does not want to compete against the tennis is not so much that the Aus Open absolutely cannot be competed against, but rather that both it and the AFLW are broadcast on the same network — Channel Seven.

Asking Seven to broadcast both at the same time would be asking them to compete against themselves, when Seven’s best commercial interest is to concentrate all attention on the tennis with no distractions.

This is a bad look for the AFL because obviously they’re putting Channel Seven’s commercial interests ahead of the entire sport of women’s football. Therefore, they don’t want to talk about it. Hence McLachlan’s strangled attempt at incomplete and inadequate explanations for why female footy players should work their butts off all year for a season that’s not expanding, but shrinking.

In 2020, the tennis moves to Channel Nine. Will this open up space for AFLW expansion? Gil can’t talk about it. Channel Seven will then have the cricket instead of the tennis, in a giant game of network musical chairs.

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Will Channel Seven then demand that the AFLW season remains short so it doesn’t compete against the cricket? Gil can’t talk about it.

What are the AFL’s long-term plans for AFLW expansion anyway, if such plans even exist? Gil has so far made no attempt to talk about it.

What have the AFL’s very excellent market analysis people discovered about the popularity of women’s football as a going commercial concern? The fact that Gil doesn’t want to talk about it raises concerns that the results aren’t great.

All of the planning for the AFLW’s future is taking place behind a veil of secrecy and commercial confidentiality.

Add to this a reluctance to talk openly about the commercial struggles of a women’s sport to attract viewers and advertisers due to the divisiveness of some such blunt observations, and the lack of transparency turns into a brick wall.

The AFL’s problem is that this brick wall works both ways — not only does it blind everyone on the outside of the AFL hierarchy from looking in, but it stops the AFL from clearly seeing out.

So they keep smacking into the wall themselves, first most notably when they got everyone offside by changing the congestion rules after Round 1 last season, and now by apparently failing to predict the current backlash.

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If they hadn’t built this brick wall of non-communication between AFL HQ and the top female players and coaches, they might not collide with it quite so often and painfully.

It’s not inconceivable that all the senior female players could simply refuse to play next season under the current arrangement — a drastic step, perhaps, but given that they’re barely playing now, it could be argued that they’re not giving up very much at all.

At this point some transparency from the AFL would go a long way to fixing things. Female athletes playing this sport at the highest level are taking a lot on faith — namely that their enormous sacrifices of time and effort will eventually amount to something worthwhile.

Right now their faith is fading, and the AFL needs to pull back the curtain and show them all a glimpse of the way ahead so they can feel more like co-passengers on a group journey, and less like sheep crammed into a road train on the Princes Highway.

Who knows — the AFL might not be actually doing anything wrong. But when no one is allowed to see the reasoning behind their decisions, people will always assume it’s a stuff up, and the resulting bad PR will dog the AFL for as long as this brick wall stands.

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