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PATRICK SMITH
Soft drinks a hard issue as AFL takes its eyes off ball
April 30, 2004
THIS should have been a good week for the AFL. The best match of the season is a day away. Brisbane await the young and fearless men coached by Grant Thomas. The Saints are undefeated. Brisbane undaunted.
The league's chief executive Andrew Demetriou and finance chief Ian Anderson released encouraging financial figures which showed club spending had been curtailed in 2003 while revenue was up 4 per cent. Only five clubs lost money. Football department costs rose by just 1 per cent.
Football was being run wisely, frugally. This might be a first in the sport's history.
The sensitive sponsorship deal with Geelong and Toyota was settled and James Hird and the AFL game development general manager David Matthews met and drafted a three-year program for Hird to act as an advocate for umpires. It will shortly be before the commission.
Some things don't gel, though. Ian Collins, president of Carlton, maintains he will run drug tests for his players despite the AFL banning the idea two weeks ago. The president also says that people should be allowed to be critical of umpires. Collins, once the AFL football operations manager, has had his chance to run the league. He was overlooked for the big job and now runs Telstra Dome. He needs to grow the grass, the AFL will grow the game.
Collins says he wants the drug tests to crack down on possible recreational drug use. It is cant and rhetoric. When two of his footballers arrived at training under the influence of ecstasy, Collins fired one and suspended the other. Fired was Laurence Angwin, who had more priors than the phone book.
Karl Norman was suspended for one week and fined $5000. If Collins was truly serious about the drug issue and not merely grandstanding Norman would have been suspended for at least 12 weeks and fined heavily. But Norman, you see, can play footy quite well. So he must be available for selection.
For the AFL, its week unravelled when it took an extraordinary step to prove that its $260,000 fine of Brisbane was both warranted and reasonable and not linked to the Lions' decision to run with a competitor of the AFL's major sponsor, Coca-Cola.
On Wednesday afternoon, AFL football operations boss, Adrian Anderson, called a meeting to extensively brief senior journalists on the extent and nature of the 26 breaches of player contract documentation.
Also present was the league's investigations manager Ken Wood. Initially, he was not to answer questions rather just explain each breach. Even this was an exceptional decision because Wood's position precludes him from talking to the media. He was quickly forced to answer questions as journalists sought clarification of some breaches.
With the decision to use Wood - an independent investigator in charge of total player payment compliance - the AFL has politicised his position. Wood was used to shore up the AFL defence and help ease the increasing criticism that the league may have acted out of malice when settling the Lions' fine. It was a tense meeting and Wood's position compromised.
Central to the AFL argument that the fine is reasonable is its claim that player contract breaches bring a mandatory $10,000 fine. Both Demetriou and Anderson have repeated that there is no room for discretion. Yet discretion was used in 2002 when Fremantle was fined $75,000, discretion used again when the Lions were fined $22,500 for 2001 breaches. That no discretion was used with Brisbane this time suggests more than a hint of vindictiveness.
The fine didn't need to be $260,000, the AFL wanted it to be $260,000.
The AFL says some contract variations were not lodged for 12 months. If these breaches are so central to monitoring the club caps why were the Lions not fined immediately? Why the wait? Or was this late fine just dredged up after the Lions agreed to drop Coca-Cola and go with its competitor Cadbury Schweppes.
If a contract is lodged one day late it draws an automatic fine of $10,000, according to the AFL. So if a club is one day late it may as well be 12 months late. Or not produce the contract at all. The penalties are the same. What a stupid rule.
Since the Lions' decision to run with a sponsor in competition with the AFL, the club has been forced to withdraw a $3 ground levy on general admission tickets and been advised that its $60,000 Melbourne accommodation allowance is under review.
Last week, Demetriou was asked three times whether he mentioned the possibility of a heavy player payment fine when a Brisbane official confirmed the new sponsorship arrangement. Three times Demetriou would neither confirm nor deny.
But most telling perhaps is what happened in the first week of February. Channel Seven ran a report that the Lions were under salary cap investigation. Demetriou denied it flatly, though Wood told journalists at Wednesday's briefing that his audit had begun in November.
Presumably, Demetriou did not speak off the top of his head and checked with Wood that that indeed was the case. You fancy the investigation was considered routine and unremarkable. That is until Cadbury replaced Coca-Cola.
The Wednesday briefing has been written about by commentators. Some analysed it, others just took dictation.
Soft drinks a hard issue as AFL takes its eyes off ball
April 30, 2004
THIS should have been a good week for the AFL. The best match of the season is a day away. Brisbane await the young and fearless men coached by Grant Thomas. The Saints are undefeated. Brisbane undaunted.
The league's chief executive Andrew Demetriou and finance chief Ian Anderson released encouraging financial figures which showed club spending had been curtailed in 2003 while revenue was up 4 per cent. Only five clubs lost money. Football department costs rose by just 1 per cent.
Football was being run wisely, frugally. This might be a first in the sport's history.
The sensitive sponsorship deal with Geelong and Toyota was settled and James Hird and the AFL game development general manager David Matthews met and drafted a three-year program for Hird to act as an advocate for umpires. It will shortly be before the commission.
Some things don't gel, though. Ian Collins, president of Carlton, maintains he will run drug tests for his players despite the AFL banning the idea two weeks ago. The president also says that people should be allowed to be critical of umpires. Collins, once the AFL football operations manager, has had his chance to run the league. He was overlooked for the big job and now runs Telstra Dome. He needs to grow the grass, the AFL will grow the game.
Collins says he wants the drug tests to crack down on possible recreational drug use. It is cant and rhetoric. When two of his footballers arrived at training under the influence of ecstasy, Collins fired one and suspended the other. Fired was Laurence Angwin, who had more priors than the phone book.
Karl Norman was suspended for one week and fined $5000. If Collins was truly serious about the drug issue and not merely grandstanding Norman would have been suspended for at least 12 weeks and fined heavily. But Norman, you see, can play footy quite well. So he must be available for selection.
For the AFL, its week unravelled when it took an extraordinary step to prove that its $260,000 fine of Brisbane was both warranted and reasonable and not linked to the Lions' decision to run with a competitor of the AFL's major sponsor, Coca-Cola.
On Wednesday afternoon, AFL football operations boss, Adrian Anderson, called a meeting to extensively brief senior journalists on the extent and nature of the 26 breaches of player contract documentation.
Also present was the league's investigations manager Ken Wood. Initially, he was not to answer questions rather just explain each breach. Even this was an exceptional decision because Wood's position precludes him from talking to the media. He was quickly forced to answer questions as journalists sought clarification of some breaches.
With the decision to use Wood - an independent investigator in charge of total player payment compliance - the AFL has politicised his position. Wood was used to shore up the AFL defence and help ease the increasing criticism that the league may have acted out of malice when settling the Lions' fine. It was a tense meeting and Wood's position compromised.
Central to the AFL argument that the fine is reasonable is its claim that player contract breaches bring a mandatory $10,000 fine. Both Demetriou and Anderson have repeated that there is no room for discretion. Yet discretion was used in 2002 when Fremantle was fined $75,000, discretion used again when the Lions were fined $22,500 for 2001 breaches. That no discretion was used with Brisbane this time suggests more than a hint of vindictiveness.
The fine didn't need to be $260,000, the AFL wanted it to be $260,000.
The AFL says some contract variations were not lodged for 12 months. If these breaches are so central to monitoring the club caps why were the Lions not fined immediately? Why the wait? Or was this late fine just dredged up after the Lions agreed to drop Coca-Cola and go with its competitor Cadbury Schweppes.
If a contract is lodged one day late it draws an automatic fine of $10,000, according to the AFL. So if a club is one day late it may as well be 12 months late. Or not produce the contract at all. The penalties are the same. What a stupid rule.
Since the Lions' decision to run with a sponsor in competition with the AFL, the club has been forced to withdraw a $3 ground levy on general admission tickets and been advised that its $60,000 Melbourne accommodation allowance is under review.
Last week, Demetriou was asked three times whether he mentioned the possibility of a heavy player payment fine when a Brisbane official confirmed the new sponsorship arrangement. Three times Demetriou would neither confirm nor deny.
But most telling perhaps is what happened in the first week of February. Channel Seven ran a report that the Lions were under salary cap investigation. Demetriou denied it flatly, though Wood told journalists at Wednesday's briefing that his audit had begun in November.
Presumably, Demetriou did not speak off the top of his head and checked with Wood that that indeed was the case. You fancy the investigation was considered routine and unremarkable. That is until Cadbury replaced Coca-Cola.
The Wednesday briefing has been written about by commentators. Some analysed it, others just took dictation.
