No Oppo Supporters 2021 General AFL Discussion

[Ticky009]

Had an opportunity to read the Michael Warner Herald article (locked) about the AFL Commission review first proposed by Andrew Pridham last October at the club president meeting.

Presidents want a fully independent review & I believe the AFL is/was proposing an internally led review (which I'm sure will surprise no one).
Then there's the fact they've been operating for 4 years without an indigenous reconciliation action plan & the report from Peter Jackson into the games indigenous programs hasn't seen the light of day.

If you wonder over to the Port board under Financial impact thread you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. It makes for an interesting read.

 

[Tedeski]

I'd take him if he was interested tbh

He's newly taken.

 

[bedford]

I'd take him if he was interested tbh

Same

 

[bedford]

Had an opportunity to read the Michael Warner Herald article (locked) about the AFL Commission review first proposed by Andrew Pridham last October at the club president meeting.

Presidents want a fully independent review & I believe the AFL is/was proposing an internally led review (which I'm sure will surprise no one).
Then there's the fact they've been operating for 4 years without an indigenous reconciliation action plan & the report from Peter Jackson into the games indigenous programs hasn't seen the light of day.

If you wonder over to the Port board under Financial impact thread you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. It makes for an interesting read.

Also being involved at local level , the AFL treats competitions with contempt , even at VFL level. Talks about that as well.

 

[Ticky009]

Also being involved at local level , the AFL treats competitions with contempt , even at VFL level. Talks about that as well.

Yes, I believe that's also a critical issue the clubs and many others have with them. If Commission left to police themselves in this the club presidents believe will go no where.

They're not going to accept anything less than an Independent inquiry it seems.

 

[Bear31]

Had an opportunity to read the Michael Warner Herald article (locked) about the AFL Commission review first proposed by Andrew Pridham last October at the club president meeting.

Presidents want a fully independent review & I believe the AFL is/was proposing an internally led review (which I'm sure will surprise no one).
Then there's the fact they've been operating for 4 years without an indigenous reconciliation action plan & the report from Peter Jackson into the games indigenous programs hasn't seen the light of day.

If you wonder over to the Port board under Financial impact thread you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. It makes for an interesting read.

from the Port board



A Michael Warner piece. He doesn't mind getting stuck into the AFL and its appendages.

Changes is coming, the question is how quickly?

Been saying for a couple of years that the AFL has to be split into 2 - have AFL Custodial Commissioners who look after the game around Oz and have AFL Competition Commissioners who run the AFL competition with the clubs having a greater say in how that competition is run.

Like the Euro major leagues model. The Football Association have control of the rules, national teams and game development and have input into helping minor leagues, and the company set up by the teams in the major league eg 20 EPL clubs run the EPL. Same happens with the Championship League and down a couple of divisions.

The battle brewing between club presidents and the AFL over independent review proposal and the game’s money
A mainstay of football’s boys’ club, Eddie McGuire has always walked both sides of the street when it came to club v AFL, Mick Warner writes


If Gillon McLachlan’s “agile” navigation of a COVID-plagued 2020 season earned him the adulation of the clubs, then, for some, the mood had cooled by Christmas.

Behind the scenes, a battle is brewing between club presidents and league bosses over a proposed independent review of the entire AFL competition. Disquiet, too, had risen by the summer break at the extent of an unbalanced cost cutting purge many now believe was too generous on the players and too savage on the clubs, the coaches and football department staff.

Several clubs have already bid farewell to key medical officials in footy’s brave new post-COVID world. Cost cuts enforced at clubs of about 35 per cent at the height of the financial crisis were followed months later, after the storm had passed, by a far friendlier deal with the AFL Players’ Association that will see the stars of the show cop wage cuts of just 3.5 per cent.
............
But it is the gathering push for a “warts and all” review of the AFL’s governance structure – first boldly proposed by Sydney Swans chairman Andrew Pridham at a presidents’ meeting in October – that looms as McLachlan’ biggest test entering his seventh full season in charge of Australia’s richest sport.

WILL CLUBS REALLY MAKE IT HAPPEN?
Not since the 1993 Crawford Report has the all-conquering commission system that controls the game been placed under the blowtorch.

A curve ball was thrown in early December when a misguided TV report suggested the commission had indeed agreed to a review, but it was the word “independent” that must have spooked the league, because no such announcement was made.

Club chiefs were dumbfounded to later discover that the AFL had in fact been considering an internally-led review as a compromise. It was never going to fly, or as one club boss bluntly put it: “That is just totally unacceptable and a red rag to a bull.”

“There is a majority of presidents who want an independent review, and the AFL are desperately trying to save face and put their own one in and get internal people to do it,” the club boss said.

Pridham has secured growing support for a sweeping assessment which (depending on its terms of reference and the person selected to lead it) could dramatically overhaul the way Australian Rules football is run – from the shamefully neglected grassroots game to the make-up of the commission itself.

Not surprisingly, the AFL doesn’t like the smell of it, but should a majority of the 18 clubs unite, the league may for once have to fall into line, because in truth it is the clubs that are the real owners and shareholders of the competition, even if head office has chosen to forget that fact.

WHERE THE CASH FIGHT NOW LIES
An extended broadcast deal with pay TV partner Foxtel in late December was a timely win for McLachlan. It means Fox Footy and free-to-air provider Channel 7, who pay the bulk of the bills, are both locked away until the end of 2024, and it is in the carve-up of the cash where the fight now lies.

In October, it emerged that five of the richest clubs – Collingwood, West Coast, Richmond, Hawthorn and Essendon – were seeking guaranteed annual distributions for all clubs equivalent to the full salary cap next year and beyond.

“The AFL managed COVID exceedingly well but there has been profound disappointment at how arbitrarily, and without the discussion, the AFL have gone and changed the financial mix to protect themselves,” one senior club figure said.

“There is a lot of dissatisfaction at the process and that has led to an increased focus on an independent review.”

Amid the cost cuts in August, the league made noises to suggest that its executive team of about a dozen (which took pay cuts of at least 20 per cent this year on their average earnings of $880,000 in 2019) was going to be significantly reduced, but it hasn’t exactly transpired.

Longstanding executive Darren Birch did take a redundancy package and Ray Gunston was shifted to an advisory role, but inclusion and social policy executive Tanya Hosch – a surprise candidate for Australian of the Year – appears to have stared down those seeking to remove her, while the league has also been on the lookout for a new finance manager, commercial manager and IT manager.

So while hundreds of rank-and-file staff across the competition were let go, the inner sanctum has seen little change to its numbers and presumably to its pay. Revelations the AFL had been operating for four years without a Reconciliation Action Plan, and its recent “unreserved” apology to the game’s 87 indigenous players over the Queensland vaccination bungle further fuelled discontent among Aboriginal players.

Mystery also surrounds the findings of a review led by former Essendon and Melbourne CEO Peter Jackson into the game’s indigenous programs.

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD
Some club bosses remain disillusioned by the performance of AFL commission chairman Richard Goyder, the Perth-based businessman who was a surprise no-show at October’s Grand Final at the Gabba.

Goyder, who has his hands full as chair of Qantas and Woodside Petroleum, is seen as too removed from the goings on in the Victorian heartland.

But in reality, it is the executive – not the commission – that has long called the shots at AFL House.

And if McLachlan was to soon call time on his reign, some suggest it is the internal candidate, chief financial officer and broadcasting boss Travis Auld, who would be his preferred successor.

While Richmond’s Brendon Gale is widely considered the best credentialed to take over, the view of the Tigers chief executive from within the AFL is surprisingly less approving.

Auld, the man who once ran the beleaguered Gold Coast Suns, is hardly a shining example of success compared to the man who transformed a broken Richmond into the biggest sporting club in Australia, but clubland outsiders such as Gale, regardless of their achievements, have rarely been invited inside the tent.

McLachlan acted swiftly and strategically after the season shutdown in March by drafting four of the biggest name presidents in the game – Eddie McGuire, Jeff Kennett, Peter Gordon and Pridham – onto his now-disbanded emergency coronavirus “war cabinet”.

But the recent retirement of Gordon (and Colin Carter at Geelong) – and Eddie McGuire’s decision to vacate the Pies’ presidency at the end of next season after 23 years in the job – signals a changing of the guard.

McGuire, a long-time linchpin of football’s boys’ club system, has always walked both sides of the street and when push came to shove was never a serious advocate for change through the Andrew Demetriou-McLachlan era.

Kennett on the other hand has been a consistent and vocal critic of the AFL administration and its lack of accountability and transparency. The former Victorian premier has committed to Hawthorn for three more seasons, and while steering his beloved Hawks to safety was his priority in seeking another term, helping oversee significant AFL reform was another driving factor.

In Pridham and a growing band of presidents and chief executives, there is an appetite for change.

An independent review of the AFL is inevitable, but it remains to be seen just how strongly it will be resisted because, although its backers insist it won’t be a royal commission into the past, Australian sport’s most powerful ruling body may finally be about to face its reckoning.




We need big bodied, big arsed warriors with a healthy dose of mongrel, who are ruthless and brave
RFK - "There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?" Port Adelaide - The Marco Polos of the AFL

 

[Nool Carpenna]

Substitute a few names there and it could well be all about our LNP Government

 

[sataris]

Is the idea that we need a separate independent entity that looks after the rules + grass roots, and the AFL essentially becomes only interested in running their own competition?

 

[bedford]

Is the idea that we need a separate independent entity that looks after the rules + grass roots, and the AFL essentially becomes only interested in running their own competition?

That's exactly it, they don't give a stuff and just try and control everything

 

[Grand Uncle Horace]

It was our club once and nothing both it was very sad, both legends of the club.

This. One of them is still a wonderful legend. The other never was.

 

[Grand Uncle Horace]

It will be the best outcome for all parties IMO.
He also gets to have the 'break' he may be chasing & should keep things out of the spotlight, where he doesn't have to front the media on behalf of the club, which will inevitably turn into questioning about his private life. Most importantly it's best for the wife & kids that must be feeling some pain.
As far as coaching is concerned, he'll get another gig by 2023 at the latest if he so wishes.
Perhaps at an interstate club where he starts fresh. GWS the team I have in mind.

Oh get over it. Consenting adults etc.

 

[bedford]

This. One of them is still a wonderful legend. The other never was.

Both greats of the club and one of them won a Brownlow !

 

[Grand Uncle Horace]

Had an opportunity to read the Michael Warner Herald article (locked) about the AFL Commission review first proposed by Andrew Pridham last October at the club president meeting.

Presidents want a fully independent review & I believe the AFL is/was proposing an internally led review (which I'm sure will surprise no one).
Then there's the fact they've been operating for 4 years without an indigenous reconciliation action plan & the report from Peter Jackson into the games indigenous programs hasn't seen the light of day.

If you wonder over to the Port board under Financial impact thread you'll be able to see what I'm talking about. It makes for an interesting read.

An Aboriginal art group I know of had a long dispute over the AFL's unlicensed use of images they had produced. Took ages to resolve with the people concerned receiving probono support from a law firm. Settled out of court in the end.

On the review, of course it should be a wholly independent review jointly commissioned by the Clubs and AFL.

 

[ScottBo]

I got shouted down by some last month for suggesting exactly this, that the upper management of the AFL won't want an independent review and will protect their own interests and financial packages. I hope the second part of the prediction, that they'll find a way to punish Pridham and the Swans, doesn't transpire.
Imagine what just one of those management wages (av $880,000) could do for grass roots footy.

 

[Tedeski]

Oh get over it. Consenting adults etc.

There's nothing for me to get over.
Hasn't affected me in any way. Glad to see you've been touched by my comment though.

 

[Grand Uncle Horace]

There's nothing for me to get over.
Hasn't affected me in any way. Glad to see you've been touched by my comment though.

Like a lot of other Dill-Lords you are suggesting he should resign. Move on Ted - you are usually better than chucking the muck.

 

[bedford]

I got shouted down by some last month for suggesting exactly this, that the upper management of the AFL won't want an independent review and will protect their own interests and financial packages. I hope the second part of the prediction, that they'll find a way to punish Pridham and the Swans, doesn't transpire.
Imagine what just one of those management wages (av $880,000) could do for grass roots footy.

I shouted in support

 

[bedford]

There's nothing for me to get over.
Hasn't affected me in any way. Glad to see you've been touched by my comment though.

Put it on ignore , it helps

 

[bedford]

Will Gould in an interview that he's learning the NEW defensive structure.

 

[Kiama Chris]

Will Gould in an interview that he's learning the NEW defensive structure.

That will be VERY interesting. Might take a while to spot the differences.

 

[Punts]

Be lucky if we get normal season

 

[Ticky009]

Do we have a thread yet for 2021 2nd tier that's supposed to be start up this year? I'm not even sure what their calling it now we're supposed to playing VFL teams.

 

[bedford]

Do we have a thread yet for 2021 2nd tier that's supposed to be start up this year? I'm not even sure what their calling it now we're supposed to playing VFL teams.

Not even a fixture yet 20 teams 16 rounds , stand alones not happy

 

[Heeney2Franklin]

Be lucky if we get normal season

1-2 clubs to merge or die if that happens.

 

[Bonz]

1-2 clubs to merge or die if that happens.

Unlikely unless a new team could come in immediately.

If there were less games televised technically the tv rights would be void.

Relocation is more likely.