dogwatch
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Well you are certainly right about Polly Farmer. That's another episode involving Geelong flouting the rules. However I'm pretty sure there was a scandal involving Alistair Lord. I'll keep looking.Pretty sure it was Polly Farmer, DW.
Don't remember any details, but I do recall it being front page news in the papers.
I remember Bob Davis being heavily involved. The original 'poach coach'?
Must've been resolved, as Polly played a lot of games for Geelong.
There was also some controversy at that time around the recruitment of Denis Marshall (another WA gun), but I don't think it was to do with dodgy payments.
Anyway, here's an extract from the link kindly provided by DognBones - I've left in and bolded the last paragraph to show that we weren't beyond a bit of skuldoggery ourselves, although not to the extent that Geelong went:
Graham ‘Polly’ Farmer was a majestic Australian Football player who had dominated the Western Australian Football League since making his debut for East Perth as an 18-year old. During the 1961 season, Farmer, then aged 27, made it known that he wanted to move to a Victorian Football League (VFL) club to play at the highest level possible. In negotiating with Farmer, VFL Clubs were restrained by the Coulter Law, the League’s recruiting and payment regulations that had been established in 1930 to set a maximum player wage and outlaw the payment of signing-on bonuses and other inducements.
Until 1970 The Coulter Law was the major device used by the VFL to stabilise the financial position of its clubs and promote competitive balance – a situation where resources and talent are distributed in a way that makes games unpredictable and attractive to spectators.
In 1961 the League’s maximum match payment was £6 per game – only 17 per cent of the Basic Wage, Australia’s centrally determined minimum wage for full-time workers (Hawke, 1994, p. 146; Hess, Nicholson, Stewart, & De Moore, 2008, p. 239; Vamplew, 1987, p. 156). Farmer chose to join Geelong and his contract included additional payments at a base rate of £1000 per year (over £55 per match in an 18-game season), a guaranteed job as a car salesman and payment of the rent on a house. Geelong also slipped East Perth £1,500 cash in return for releasing Farmer – another practice that was prohibited by the Coulter Law (Hawke, 1994, pp. 148, 151). Farmer was thus able to capture the economic rents that his skills generated, just as he would have been able to have done had the labour market been competitive.
Clandestine player payments came from sponsors and patrons and were not part of the formal club wage structure. They were not recorded in club financial statements for reasons of probity and to avoid League sanctions. Football observers had for some time been convinced that breaching the Coulter Law to secure star players was a common practice among clubs. There were complaints in the press that non-compliance by clubs had made the regulations ‘farcical’ as early as 1931 (Donald, 2003, p. 31).
In 1950 19-year old Herb Henderson was on a train from Mildura, carrying his football gear in a hessian sack, having been invited to try out with Richmond. Footscray’s secretary and another official boarded at North Melbourne, the second last stop, called out Henderson’s name and persuaded him to get off the train. For a fee of £100, Footscray signed a player who would become a star fullback (Lack, McConville, Small, & Wright, 1996, p. 162; Western Bulldogs Forever Foundation, 2010, p. 120).
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