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Joined May 2014
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A Sydney Swans fan who lives in Adelaide. Favourite sports are AFL, Football and Basketball. American sports tragic but my love for Australia\'s game - AFL is unheralded.
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As a passionate Sydney Swans fan, it brought me pain to continually hear ‘experts' and the general football public confidently say the Hawks are…
‘Special considerations different teams gets’
I think everyone could agree that would be a looong list. Fixturing, how many games on free to air, teams with better stadium deals, third party payments (Judd’s visy $$). That’s the tip of the iceberg
The Swans have a right to be angry
Great article, we saw Eddie whack Brisbane after their success and he’s at it again. You could almost get everything he said about Brisbane and replace ‘Brisbane’ with Sydney’. To all Victorians who think he’s representing your ‘football community’, boy do you need a new set of eyes. Think of how many smaller Melbourne clubs who have had to put their hands out to the AFL for $$ while Collingwood become the richest club in the land. He’s happy for smaller clubs to play hardly any games on free to air television, assisted in creating one the weakest ‘equalisation’ policies in professional sport and then attacked Northern state academies and potentially robbing all clubs of new talent.
Yes the respective clubs do get first crack at any up and coming talent like Issac Heeney, but they have to sacrifice their first pick for him. Furthermore, if these systems prosper, wouldn’t it benefit all to widen the talent pool clubs can pick players from? It’s not an overnight story but if 20 years down the track, there’s double the amount of players coming from northern states, wouldn’t there be more Issac Heeneys for everyone to pick from?
Back to the COLA, to save myself from writing I’d suggest many watch this video from On the Couch regarding Sydney recruiting Buddy and Tippo; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v-p9UFJ8Ao
Once you’ve watched it, just think of the great list management of Kinnear Beatson and others. Kieren Jack, Dane Rampe were rookie listed players. Ted Richards wasn’t wanted at Essendon, he’s now one of the best full backs going around. Rhyce Shaw wasn’t wanted at Collingwood and has proven to be a bargain recruit. They also successfully use back-ended/front-ended contracts to fit everyone in and make tough calls on players eg Shane Mumford. Big mummy was a dominant ruckman at the Swans and still is today but the Sydney football department along with coaches etc made a tough call, they said we have to let our number 1 premiership ruckmen go so they can afford a superstar forward.
COLA doesn’t make that call, decisive and smart list management does.
And I’ll play captain obvious and note you can have all the talent in the world but if you don’t have a good coaching set up who can build a strong game plan that delivers success, you’ll be struggling. Sydney must have seen something in John Longmire after they organised the Roos-Longmire succession plan and it’s fair to say finishing 5th(could be 6th) in 2011, Premiers in’12, a prelim in ’13 and quite possibly a very strong 2014(I’ve never successfully predicted a top four and I won start now), Longmire and his coaching staff know a thing or two about coaching.
All in all, as a Swans fan I find it disrespectful to all the hard work done by everyone at Sydney to say they’re only good because of the COLA and it’s an unfair advantage. It’s not used as a pool of cash used on two players, it’s spread to each player.
The Swans have a right to be angry
Great to hear some South Australian related content again. I was always a Swans fan in Adelaide but supported the Woodville West Torrens Eagles and it didn’t take long to understand the disdain/bitterness towards Port Adelaide.
This still flows to the AFL and while I respect the tradition, I absolutely love it if the Swans beat Port. I’ve got two questions for you though.
In 2011 Port effectively received $9 million from the AFL over 3 years. Do you think that’s fair when plenty of other struggling teams could use money the size of that?
Secondly, is Port Adelaide one club and if so why?
Great read, keep up the good work.
The joy has returned for Power fans
It sure is mate haha. I’d agree that if they continue playing the way they are they’ll get rewarded with some Friday night games. Regarding the reserves teams, they did about 15 years too late but it’s great to see because it helps their list management and hopefully makes them more competitive.
It probably happened too late because of the money hungry SANFL and their control of the two clubs which is a story itself along with their terrible stadium deals…but I’ll stop here before I get into a rant.
Equality is a must in the AFL
How about Port Adelaide’s rise on and off the field? They didn’t need Friday night games and stand alone games with a national reach. They kicked out a board that didn’t deliver, brought in a new one. From there they appointed a new coach who has drastically improved their list. They got a new head of fitness which combined with the new coach, delivered better on field results and now they’re getting 45k plus fans to games.
But here’s the funny bit, in 2011 they were essentially given $9 million for 3 years ($3 million allocated each year) by the AFL. They also have a brand new stadium which would significantly help bring in crowds, memberships and corporates. Would they have been able to do all the above without this extra $$??
Also, they also had a large base of first and second round draft picks who are proving to be gems. While this may sound easy, I’m sure there’s a long list of first and second round draft picks who haven’t turned out what everyone thought they’d be.
While off field factors do play a large part in a team’s success, you can’t ignore the on field factors. It’s no coincidence that Geelong, Hawthorn and other top teams have successfully recruited, set new standards in fitness and retained some of the best coaching talent in the land.
Equality is a must in the AFL
Great research and an even better article. I reckon it would be great to see the impact Pay-TV (Foxtel) has had on attendance or the imapct of games being played live on TV, you always hear the negatives of the two but it’d be interesting to see the results. In addition, the only shame is the AFL still forces Sydney to play ‘home’ games at ANZ stadium.
Are AFL attendances really falling?
Hey guys thanks for all your feedback, there’s clearly a lot more to it than I thought but I’m more than happy to learn, thanks for all your comments.
Are Hawthorn really better without Buddy?
I’m not sure if you’re serious. First of all, the AFL ‘draw’ has never been and probably never will be a fair and equal competition because of many factors but to put it down to the AFL wanting to ensure the success of the Sydney Swans is ludicrous. The draw is driven by television broadcasters demand for big TV audiences and subsequently more $$. And if you don’t think Eddie’s Collingwood get a nice deal in this regard you need to have a second look at who gets a large number of free-to-air televised games, it’s not the Western Bulldogs or St. Kilda who continue to struggle off field.
Compliant umpiring? If you think games are won/heavily influenced by umpiring then I suggest you watch the two sets of 18 players on the ground playing against each other, they tend to have a bigger impact.
If you’re talking about juicy salary cap allowances can we include Chris Judd’s VISY deal?
And 7 years from now $1M a year will not be placing as big of a burden on Sydney’s salary cap. Yes it’ll be a large amount but with continual increases in the total player payments and another huge broadcast rights deal, the AFLPA will no doubt secure more money for the players and a bigger salary cap for each team.
And what do you expect Andrew Pridham to do? If Eddie lied about something your club did (Sydney not wanting GWS) or talked about your club in a demeaning and defamatory manner, wouldn’t you want your Chairman/Preisdent to stand up for his constituents?
The Swans have a right to be angry