Analysis Conspiracy theories surrounding Geelong's list management and salary cap

Remove this Banner Ad

ctravm said:
Still hearing about the unfairness of the F/S rule, despite our best F/S since they changed the rule after 2006, being Jed Bews, taken pick 80 something I think.

On CPH1831 using BigFooty.com mobile app
Click to expand...

There is certainly no doubt we capitalised on a couple of significant F/S' in Hawkins & Ablett.
Hawkins was a man-child and there has yet to be another like him as a potential up and coming kpf draft selection.
 
ctravm said:
Still hearing about the unfairness of the F/S rule, despite our best F/S since they changed the rule after 2006, being Jed Bews, taken pick 80 something I think.

On CPH1831 using BigFooty.com mobile app
Click to expand...

Things more recent to the drafting of Tom Hawkins as the drafting of Tom Hawkins was from
  • The fall of the communism and the break up of the soviet union
  • The soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan
  • The Tiannenmen square massacre
  • The formation of the European Union
  • The end of the Iran-Iraq war
  • The end of apartheid
  • The invention of the hypertext transfer protocol (http website system)
  • The first computer worm is written and released
  • Linux operating systems were invented
 

Log in to remove this ad.

And from that crop that played 15 years ago we haven’t gotten anyone come in and star.
It’s been 19 years since 07… I think it’s time to let go.

I’m all for keeping the FS but we seems so far removed from it being a thing for us.

The Academies are regularly producing for this clubs with them - they are not one in 15 year events

Go Catters
 
CatToTheFuture said:
It was a long long time ago now though
Click to expand...

No doubt but one could argue we may not have won as many flags without Hawkins as that was the impact of securing the father/son selection.

On the flip-side, Geelong played a Carlton side in 1995 who should never have had as many star-studded players as they were rorting the salary cap for years.
We play a team like North Melbourne that season instead, and we probably win the premiership.
 
ctravm said:
Still hearing about the unfairness of the F/S rule, despite our best F/S since they changed the rule after 2006, being Jed Bews, taken pick 80 something I think.

On CPH1831 using BigFooty.com mobile app
Click to expand...
I love how they mention the F/S but don't mention the AFL changing the NGL zones so that the Bulldogs got JUH instead of Geelong
 
IIRC, the AFL changed the rules regarding outside sponsorships of players after the Judd/Visy deal, and what a player earns from a corporate deal is now included in a club's salary cap. Also, all contracts like these must be approved by the AFL first, so it is impossible to do under-the-table deals with players these days. Again, once a Carlton specialty.

Bailey Smith bought a house, not a farm. So, big deal. One just has to look at the housing market to see the stupidity of this idea that the Cats can somehow influence real estate deals. That is highly illegal, for a start. That one is pure idiocy at work.

All clubs meet with potential recruits from other teams during the season. The only scandalous thing about the Boak talks was that our guys got caught, but every club does it. If it's not with the players directly, it's with their managers.

Geelong has managed its salary cap by never overpaying players. That's not cheating; that's just the sign of a well-run club. Brody Grundy, for example, turned down Geelong because we wouldn't pay his overinflated asking price, and Melb did. It happens fairly frequently that some players initially interested in coming to Geelong go elsewhere because we won't pay their ridiculous price. Again, that's the sign of a well-run club.

The idea that the Cats are super ruthless during the trade period is also ridiculous. Trading is a business negotiation; sometimes, you might have the upper hand (like with Bailey Smith), and other times, you won't (Like with Jeremy Cameron or Clayton Oliver). That's just the cut and thrust of doing business. Every club goes through the same.
 
The Unforgiven said:
In light of Geelong's ability to target and successfully recruit yet another high-profile player to the club in Bailey Smith, I would like to examine the conjecture which surrounded not just Bailey's acquisition, but those of all his predecessors in the last decade.

Scrolling through BigFooty and social media in the last few days really got me reminiscing about some of the crazy conspiracy theories that have been bandied around by opposition supporters towards Geelong for the better part of fifteen years.

I think I first began to notice some rumblings on Facebook as Geelong became very successful in the late 2000s. Much was made in the media about Geelong players' vaunted taking unders for success initiative to explain how such a talented group could remain together for so long. A claim that was met with cynicism by some pundits.

However, once we lost Ablett to the newly formed Suns in 2010, the heat came off a bit, despite winning the flag the following year. Most neutrals saw us as being merely lucky to have snagged one more flag in 2011, as the oldest side in the competition, and that surely the "too old, too slow" Cats wouldn't be "too good" for a very long while, either.

As someone who lives in Adelaide, when Chris Scott and Jimmy Bartel were spotted at Adelaide airport and questioned by Channel 9 reporter, Tom Rehn, in 2012, after a suspected courting of Travis Boak, it wasn't just Port fans who were a little miffed. Crows fans, too, were a little on edge about the prospect of one day, Patrick Dangerfield, heading back to the motherland of Moggs Creek.

The attempted heist was as daring as it was brazen, but ultimately proved unsuccessful. However, as quickly as Travis Boak's admirable loyalty to Port Adelaide was accepted, the rumour mill swiftly turned to when, not if Geelong would be back to West Horsham to make a play for Patrick Dangerfield.

And, sure enough, with those seeds of fear planted in the minds of the Crows' faithful, the cynicism and toxicity within that supporter base - who were reeling from the very recent defections of players like Phil Davis to GWS, Kurt Tippett to Sydney, and Jack Gunston to Hawthorn (just to name a few) - was starting to foment by the year's end.

As much as this isn't about the Adelaide Crows, I feel that it was the pursuit and eventual success of managing to obtain the signature of Patrick Dangerfield that really set things of a conspiratorial nature in motion.

I especially recall some of the crazy things that Adelaide supporters were saying in the early days about Mardi Harwood, daughter of ex-Mayor of the City of Greater Geelong, Bruce Harwood. Some wild accusations were made around the influence that Mardi had over Patrick, and her ability to manipulate him vis-à-vis Bruce's influence and standing within the Geelong community.

It's been claimed, without evidence, that Mardi "refused" to start a family until they moved back to Geelong, and that Bruce, along with the late Frank Costa, were pulling strings behind the scenes to facilitate a move to the Geelong Football Club

Bruce himself didn't escape the ire of the Adelaide faithful where, on one occasion, the Geelong Football Club facilitated hosting the extended Dangerfield family with something like "thirty seats" at Simonds Stadium being made available. This was said to have been orchestrated by Mr. Harwood using his influence within the coterie club, and was done so with the express intention of undermining the Adelaide Crows.

Accusations were also levelled at Frank (as well as tropes about being "connected" owing to his Italian ethnicity) about his influence in the region. These include but are not limited to, "providing employment to Patrick's mother and aunt by hiring them to clean his Surf Coast palazzo" as well as other promises to set up Patrick in Geelong post-AFL, should he decide to make the move home.

We all know how it ended; Geelong got its man, and the rest is history.

However, what didn't end, is the continual conspiracy theories being thrown around by opposition supporters regarding Geelong's "bottomless salary cap" and how Geelong "must be rorting the system" to keep being able to afford to have a crack at - and successfully lure - star players from other clubs.

Many believe that in order to obtain the signature of Jeremy Cameron, very little had to do with Jezza's stated desire to move back to regional Victoria and everything to do with offering a "free farm" as well as other undisclosed "perks" (Ford Rangers and the like).

More recently, it seems as though Nigel Austin, founder and managing director of the Geelong-based clothing company Cotton On - a major sponsor of the Geelong Football Club - has also been in the gun for his apparent influence over luring players to the club.

It's been stated that Cotton On, as both a major sponsor of the GFC, and an individual sponsor of players, i.e. Bailey Smith, is displaying a conflict of interest because of the unfounded claims of having heavily contributed towards convincing Bailey to choose Geelong.

One only needs to observe the furore that was Bailey sitting in the stands amongst Geelong players at the preliminary final between Geelong and Brisbane as an example. This was done so at the behest of the Cotton On founder himself, or so it was reported.

It's been posited that the many influential people, both in the inner sanctum of the club and those business heavyweights on the periphery, are able to work in unison to covertly influence and facilitate a move for many star players to Geelong by having access to a network of Visy-style perks.

It has been stated by many (ahem, Richmond) supporters on here that Steve Hocking is extremely influential at AFL House, owing to his years served there, and knows the systems so well that he can and has devised a clandestine operation whereby the club is offering a suite of perks that covertly subvert the TTP (Total Player Payment) cap.

So, along with farms, miscellaneous plots of land at Armstrong Creek, subsidised Simonds homes built on said plots of land, Ford Rangers, lucrative Cotton On endorsements, as well as a CEO well-connected at AFL House, and a bevvy of influential local businessmen... what other parts in this sum have I missed which makes up the nefarious illuminati that is the only plausible explanation for Geelong's on and off-field success?
Click to expand...
It's not rocket science....Geelong has quiet beach communities close to it and farming areas....something no other clubs has to offer
 
My Tilly said:
There is certainly no doubt we capitalised on a couple of significant F/S' in Hawkins & Ablett.
Hawkins was a man-child and there has yet to be another like him as a potential up and coming kpf draft selection.
Click to expand...
Ablett was rated by no one and went very late and it took Hawkins years to be good he almost retired due to injuries

A lot of opposition supporters are rewriting history with our F/S picks all those years ago
 
PhatBoy said:
Essentially it comes down to this:

Tiny, spineless, excuse-making intellects belonging to people who were always taught that there has to be a surreptitious or scandalous reason that they, or a team they followed, were not #1, if and when it didn’t happen for them. Being unable to simply ever say ‘this person or this team did it better on the day’ is a sad state of affairs.
Click to expand...
Whenever I hear the conspiracy theories about how we've rorted the system/cheated/had people 'on the inside' etc., I think of my young niece losing a game of school hockey a couple of years ago. She'd just started playing the game and her team had won their first few matches. The next week they played a different school and were beaten comfortably.

When the game finished, she came running over to my sister with tears in her eyes..."It's not fair, Mummy. They were better than us!"

#nailedit
#thatslife
#getusedtoitpeople
 
CatToTheFuture said:
Things more recent to the drafting of Tom Hawkins as the drafting of Tom Hawkins was from
  • The fall of the communism and the break up of the soviet union
  • The soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan
  • The Tiannenmen square massacre
  • The formation of the European Union
  • The end of the Iran-Iraq war
  • The end of apartheid
  • The invention of the hypertext transfer protocol (http website system)
  • The first computer worm is written and released
  • Linux operating systems were invented
Click to expand...
And Tim Walz was at all these events!
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

Strange Cat said:
Ablett was rated by no one and went very late and it took Hawkins years to be good he almost retired due to injuries

A lot of opposition supporters are rewriting history with our F/S picks all those years ago
Click to expand...
Ablett and Scarlett were phenomenal AFL players, but neither were highly rated as juniors. In fact, Ablett at #40 was almost overs and his drafting probably because of his name.

Revisionists (and oppo supporters with NFI) talk like we got Ablett and Scarlett in the same manner as N.Daicos, Ashcroft and, sure, Tom Hawkins.
 
The Unforgiven said:
Ablett and Scarlett were phenomenal AFL players, but neither were highly rated as juniors. In fact, Ablett at #40 was almost overs and his drafting probably because of his name.

Revisionists (and oppo supporters with NFI) talk like we got Ablett and Scarlett in the same manner as N.Daicos, Ashcroft and, sure, Tom Hawkins.
Click to expand...
Shits me to tears seeing oppo supporters re writing history to suit their narrative for the F/S
 
Last edited:
Mad_Hatter said:
Same people do it with 2011 to discredit Scott aswell.
Click to expand...
I would actually like to see a list of F/S for each club just to see how the numbers stack up when you’re looking at how “successful “ they really are?

My guess it’s no different than drafting anybody in terms of career success for the club
 
Last season, Geelong had 1 player in the top 80 Earners in the league, Jeremy Cameron.
2 others, Dangerfield and Stewart also made the top 100.

Geelong just spread their salary cap much more evenly between all players.

Its also the reason we have had to trade for Dangerfield and Cameron. Other teams just offer Restricted Free Agents massive front-ended contracts, ones their previous clubs cant afford in their Salary Caps to match, and they get those players for nothing.
 
Mangy Carl said:
Last season, Geelong had 1 player in the top 80 Earners in the league, Jeremy Cameron.
2 others, Dangerfield and Stewart also made the top 100.

Geelong just spread their salary cap much more evenly between all players.

Its also the reason we have had to trade for Dangerfield and Cameron. Other teams just offer Restricted Free Agents massive front-ended contracts, ones their previous clubs cant afford in their Salary Caps to match, and they get those players for nothing.
Click to expand...
Not true. We front ended Cameron's contract offer and GWS matched it so we had to trade.

Also, when discussing ruckmen last week Mackie actually said "It's not often good, agile rucks become available as free agents. So if you want to get one you have to pay a lot".

So.... we are targeting free agents.
 
Whenever oppo fans get into a fit about Geelong, i just go along with it to rile them up even more.

Yep, we were drug cheats during 07-11. Hocking indeed did **** Richmond over. Every one of our players drives fords and works at cotton-on for extra coin outside the cap, and lastly, yes, absolutely every player lives on a farm that is all paid for upon signing for Geelong.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

Analysis Conspiracy theories surrounding Geelong's list management and salary cap

Similar threads

cats_09
  • Poll
List Mgmt. Welcome Bailey Smith - officially (and finally) traded to Geelong
33 34 35 36 37
Replies
920
Views
46K
Mr Meow
M
cats_09
List Mgmt. Jack Martin officially joins Geelong as a DFA
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
131
Views
9K
Commando
Commando
cats_09
Rumour GFC 2024 Player Trading, Drafting FA, Rumours and Wish lists Pt 3
218 219 220 221 222
Replies
6K
Views
222K
cats_09
cats_09
cats_09
  • Locked
  • Sticky
Mod. Notice Resources and index of important threads (inc. BigFooty and Geelong Board rules etc) - Updated 2024
Replies
1
Views
1K
cats_09
cats_09
iameviljez
Geelong Sliding Doors
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
127
Views
5K
rapidfire7
rapidfire7
cats_09
List Mgmt. Experienced Trio Sign On - Dangerfield, Duncan & Stanley
Replies
11
Views
582
And_ROOS
And_ROOS
cats_09
VFL VFL 2025 - Geelong & the greater league
2 3
Replies
72
Views
4K
Art Vandelay_
Art Vandelay_

Remove this Banner Ad

Back
Top