http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/afl-is-a-deadend-sport-that-hinders-us-on-global-stage-20100626-zaqz.html
Australia's most talented athletes are wasted in a code that the world ignores.
Timezones are not friendly to Australian sports fans. Waking up at 3am in the middle of winter is hardly fun, but we do it because there is a thrill and pride in watching Australians compete in the world's biggest sporting events, where the result matters to not only us, but to millions of others around the world, too.
Yes, even watching Germany thrash the Socceroos was exciting for the first nine minutes.
If you love this, then you must wish that the AFL's grand ambitions to dominate the Australian sporting landscape are thwarted.
It's a zero-sum game. The more AFL succeeds, the smaller the talent pool of the athletes available for international competition.
Deliberately obstructing Australia's bids for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup may have been good business for the AFL, but it's bad news for Australian sport.
Who wouldn't want to see the world's greatest sporting event on these shores? The 16 clubs of the AFL, that's who. Let's be frank. If AFL expansion clubs Greater Western Sydney and Gold Coast were to succeed in growing the code - a phrase that's interchangeable with generating record TV revenue - then the big winners are the AFL clubs, 10 of which are Victorian.
AFL expansion is simply the subsidising of Victorian parochialism and the code's CEO, Andrew Demetriou, is prepared to go to great lengths to achieve it, including the multimillion-dollar signing of NRL star Israel Folau - a man as familiar with AFL as Pim Verbeek is to 4-4-2 football.
It may just be a one-off publicity stunt, but the AFL has said it is prepared to chase other elite athletes for cross-code switches.
Demetriou is the merry Pied Piper of Australian sport. If the Folau signing is a blueprint for future AFL plans, then Demetriou wants to roadblock Australian sport, pick off the cream of the talent and lead them down a cul-de-sac the size of Ramsay Street.
In this sporting dead-end, the AFL tells players which house they live in, via the draft, and uses a salary cap to limit how much they earn. Apart from the odd punter who escapes over the back fence to pursue a speculative career in the NFL, there's nowhere to go for athletes once they are in the system.
Where will Folau go at the end of his four-year deal? At best, the same way he came in.
If Folau stayed in the NRL, he could go to rugby and play for the Wallabies or for clubs in Japan, France and the United Kingdom. Even if he stayed in league, Folau could superannuate his career in northern England.
In other words, as an individual he has options whereas a dedicated AFL athlete's future is tied to the collective.
The NFL is the only other sporting competition in the world that does not suffer much player leakage to rival competition or codes despite having a genuine salary cap and a draft. But whereas Super Bowl Sunday is one of the world's great sporting events, the significance of the last Saturday in September barely causes a ripple north of the Murray River.
The AFL's approach is understandable. It wants to maximise its chances of survival in the sporting landscape, but such self-interest is not necessarily a good thing. Just look at the spread of the cane toad.
There is realistic, long-term growth in other sports. Tennis, cricket, baseball, basketball, golf, football and the rugby codes offer international outlets. What's the pinnacle in the AFL? A grand final appearance with Collingwood?
Spruiking AFL expansion is a black-and-white argument.
Stephen Samuelson is the sports editor of smh.com.au
