TOM MORRIS: Footy has never had less integrity - and the AFL wouldn't have it any other way

What do footy fanatics hate most?

It’s a no-contest: Change.

With few exceptions, there is an overwhelmingly jarring stench of displeasure whenever the AFL floats a fresh idea.

They know it, we know it. It’s entirely foreseeable.

The pushback exists on social media, where chat groups form to complain about the league’s mishandling of the sport. Hyperbole is the norm.

It exists in person too, at lunch tables and offices around the country. Talkback radio is mired with fed-up fans every day of the season.

Want a night Grand Final? Cue outrage.

OK then, what about a best of three Grand Final series? Are you kidding?

This is not an article to debate the merits or otherwise of any left-field suggestion raised in last week’s meeting between the AFL and its 18 clubs’ CEOs.

No, it is broader than that: What is the fundamental purpose of Australian Football?

Is it an entertainment product? Like a movie, but in real time, where fans expect to leave each match feeling fulfilled in the same way you walk out of a cinema with the best bits of a film rotating in your mind?

Or should football at the top level see ‘entertainment’ as secondary to integrity and fairness?

In the English Premier League, each team plays each other twice; one home game, and one away. Fixture integrity cannot be questioned.

Is the sacrifice entertainment? Maybe. But they don’t care. The Football Association implicitly trusts the sport itself to lure people in and sees no need to add gimmicks to enhance the experience of fans.

Football in this country is less sure of itself. The constant tinkering tells us that. The sport has morphed into an almost unrecognisable version of its former self. Rolling mauls, a Bible-sized book of laws and regulations, plus growing concerns around physical safety means the code is on a constant treadmill.

In the eyes of some, it’s evolving too quickly. The ‘leave the game alone’ crew is vast in its millions. They should make t-shirts. They’d sell out in days.

Regardless of where you sit on the need for change or otherwise, it cannot be disputed that the AFL is at least somewhat confused.

Does it prioritise interest or integrity higher?

You probably know the answer. Interest equals money and substantial growth. Integrity equals cost cutting and seismic change.

A 17-round season is fair and just. Each club could host their opponent one year and play away the next. But it would cost the league tens of millions of dollars, maybe more.

Yes, additional value would be attached to each game. But broadcasters want a healthy balance of quantity and quality and in their eyes, fewer matches is not something they are prepared to pay top dollar for.

In this instance, the AFL has sacrificed integrity for the benefit of cash.

“We just have, in elite sport by global standards, one of the most compromised competitions that you can possibly imagine,” dual Geelong premiership coach Chris Scott said last week.

“Uneven numbers ]of games against opponents]; let’s just throw in a Gather Round, compromise the competition even more.

“If these things are really, really important from a fan perspective or from a commercial perspective they are worthy of thought. I would just ask if the integrity of the competition is given as much thought?”

Charlie Curnow has kicked 19 goals in two matches against the West Coast Eagles in 2023. (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

Scott is calculating. He knows the answer. He rarely poses questions when he doesn’t.

A quick glance at the 2023 fixture proves his point. West Coast – perhaps the weakest team we’ve seen since Mark Neeld’s Melbourne – will this year play Carlton, Richmond, Essendon, Fremantle, and North Melbourne twice before they meet the Western Bulldogs for the first time.

Geelong has ‘hosted’ Collingwood 25 times at the MCG as the ‘home’ team this century, but the Pies have not visited Kardinia Park since 1999.

Across the same period, North Melbourne has travelled down the highway on 18 occasions to take on the Cats.

Why the discrepancy? Crowd numbers. Another example of the league, rightly or wrongly, prioritising audience and entertainment ahead of integrity.

Since 2000, Carlton and Essendon have played at Kardinia Park three times apiece, but just twice outside the pandemic years, while Richmond has been afforded ‘away’ matches against Geelong at the MCG since 2017.

The league would argue the discourse is not binary. They would say you can balance integrity while pushing interest. They would say every week most teams can win and the product is selling, which justifies their means.

But fans, or at least the ones who are most vocal on these matters, clearly believe the pendulum has shifted too far towards entertainment.

It can work the other way too, though it is rarer. Those locked out supporters who were angered by the AFL’s refusal to move Geelong’s game against Essendon from Kardinia Park to a larger stadium would also see that this was an example of the AFL prioritising integrity over interest for once.

There is no easy solution. The AFL as a business model is unnervingly transient with a wide variety of key stakeholders. Even with consistency of key staff such as Gillon McLachlan, the long-term viability of the game has often been sacrificed for immediate financial reward.

But hey, that is all OK if we know what we are in for. The Big Bash League does not pretend to be anything but hit and giggle with fleeting substance. Contrastingly, the PGA Tour lets the golf grip you, rather than any showbiz gimmick.

Both have their place and make no apologies about their brand.

You walk into Village Cinemas or a Broadway musical knowing what you’re going to get. But when you pay for your football ticket, are you really watching a fully-fledged professional league with fairness and integrity at its core? How can Charlie Curnow win the Coleman Medal – a financially lucrative achievement – having kicked 19 goals in two bloodbaths against West Coast, when Tom Hawkins only gets one crack at them?

Or are you observing a toned-down, new-age version of the Truman Show designed to capture our eyeballs and clicking fingers, but not much more?

The AFL, for all the good it has done, needs to determine precisely what it wants to be, or fans will subconsciously distance themselves from the sport and align themselves to the product and brand. This increases interest, but in what? The game, or the stories around the game?

And the best example of the proliferation of entertainment and 21st century online natter over the sport itself?

The trade period.