Growing Code While Running The Game Creates Bind For Afl

The Sunday Age

Sunday July 20, 2008

Tim Lane

Keeping a level playing field while expanding the competition is a tough balancing act for the AFL.

THE fact Brian Cook has opted for the Surf Coast over the Gold Coast, while a disappointment for the AFL and GC17, is a healthy outcome.

When his decision to stay at Geelong was announced on Friday, Cook was described by his club's president, Frank Costa, as "the greatest recruit we have ever had". While some will bestow a higher ranking on "Polly" Farmer, at least one of a pair of Gary Abletts, or a number of other club greats, no one would argue that chief executive Cook hasn't been a Geelong hero.

Had he chosen to leave Skilled Stadium, notwithstanding that it has emerged he was an enthusiastic party to discussions with the AFL, Cats fans would have felt aggrieved. They could justifiably complain that it would be one thing for the AFL to appoint a star performer to a job within the game's central administration, but quite another for it to appoint him to a role with one of Geelong's competitors, albeit a rival of the future.

The AFL's chief operating officer, Gillon McLachlan, defended his administration's role in the process yesterday, stating that it was Cook who approached the AFL about the job. He said the AFL was simply doing football a service by seeking to ensure that Cook remained in the industry when other opportunities were being thrust his way.

Given that Cook has ultimately chosen to stay put at Geelong, and the central administration has had to deal with claims of meddling where it didn't belong, the AFL would appear to have been led down a blind alley. The league's statement on Friday, following the announcement of Cook's decision, indicated that the Gold Coast position will now be advertised. Perhaps that was the more prudent course in the first place.

Geelong supporters are not the only ones with concerns over some of the realities involved in this issue. Those from other positions within the industry argue that whatever offers and counter-offers have been made to Cook are likely to trigger an inflationary spiral on the price of a good CEO and thus be to the ultimate disadvantage of all clubs.

There are also obvious concerns that many more prized club employees will be next on the GC17 hit-list.

Such is the difficulty for the AFL of simultaneously administering a developing national sport and a national league. They are not the same beast and their interests don't always coincide. When the erstwhile Australian Football Council was disbanded in the early 1990s, following the establishment of the AFL, the new body assumed control of the management of the game at large. It thus created a position of potential conflict for itself. It's something that shouldn't go unobserved and it is at least healthy that in whatever attempt was made to lure Cook to the Gold Coast, the fundamentals, if not the details, were exposed to public view.

This was the AFL acting as carer-of-the-code. Understandably, it considers that it has a responsibility to foster the growth of the game in populous zones where it hasn't yet flourished. The Gold Coast and the western suburbs of Sydney are the two most obvious.

As the most effective way of penetrating any new market is through the establishment of an elite-level team, the AFL turns to the administrator of the elite-level competition, in other words, itself. And when it pushes the buttons to produce the outcomes it wants, it can collide with other parties involved in the elite-level competition. Like Geelong.

The onus on the AFL to recognise its responsibility to its constituent clubs grows by the year. These days, it brings considerable emotional pressure to bear on supporters to become club members. This week, the league announced that its clubs had achieved a record tally of 574,091 members in 2008. That's a lot of shareholders, each making an investment in the fortunes of one of the competition's 16 clubs. The AFL can't ask these people to open their wallets, some to stretching point, without ensuring there is meticulous fairness about the competition it oversees.

That should be so self-evident as to be not even worth stating. Yet the dual nature of the AFL's overriding charter makes it an issue. This has already been so for a number of years in relation to Sydney and Brisbane. On the fortunes of these two clubs has rested the rate of progress of the game's development in two of the nation's three most populous states.

Clearly, the AFL has a broader interest in their performances than in those of any of their rivals. As former CEO Wayne Jackson said early in his tenure, his three immediate priorities were "Sydney, Sydney, and Sydney".

Therein lies the potential for a problem. In dealing with it, the AFL should bend over backwards to ensure that its commitment to one part of its charter, the growth of the code, is never seen to influence it in its other role, managing a healthy competition that is fought out on a level playing field.

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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