serious14
Well-Known Member
Quality article from the Australian - and I can't help but smile at the small but significant mention football gets, and how delightfully positive it is.
"By Patrick Smith
May 24, 2008
DAVID Smorgon is a successful club president. He has fought a long, intense battle to keep the Western Bulldogs in the AFL. He began his task in 1996; not only has he kept the club alive, it is now beginning to flourish. He ought to be an expert on the market forces that impact on AFL clubs.
David Gallop is a successful sports administrator. He has given the NRL a sense of dignity, of purpose. He has applied standards for the game where once there seemed to be none at all. He ought to be an expert on what makes rugby league tick. He thinks several Sydney NRL clubs are on death row.
Cappuccino Kennett is president of successful club Hawthorn and knows everything about anything. He thinks Melbourne should relocate to the Gold Coast. Paul Gardner is president of Melbourne who in 2003 began saving the club from a hopeless financial position. He was able to stabilise the club but not grow it. He thinks Hawthorn should relocate to Tasmania.
Andrew Demetriou successfully runs the AFL and thinks Melbourne is now in worse shape than North Melbourne, who seriously flirted with a move to the Gold Coast last year.
As rugby league clubs consider fleeing Sydney, the AFL wants to move in to western Sydney. League is losing players to Europe, the Bulldogs' Sonny Bill Williams wants to play rugby union and New South Wales rugby coach Ewen McKenzie is sacked and then leads the Waratahs into the semi-finals of the Super 14.
Australia is on a campaign to qualify for the football World Cup, Adelaide progresses in the Asian Champions League and, more, you must tread warily wherever you walk in fear of stepping on the foundations of a new A-League club.
Sport is going every which way as the market for the sporting dollar shrinks while demand increases by the day. Everybody has run out of old money and searches for the new.
It might be that our winter codes have never been more confused. Smorgon argues that the debate whether Melbourne can support 10 clubs has been almost endless and still 10 clubs survive. He points to clubs all but hitting the wall - like Geelong - then rebounding significantly.
That is true but it is a simplistic view. At any given time, two of the 10 clubs are fighting for their very lives. Right now, it is North Melbourne and Melbourne. As one club bounces back another teeters. The 10 clubs are - as a whole - consistently under-funded because the corporate world and supporters cannot spread themselves around with enough effect to stabilise all teams.
As it is, Hawthorn sells four home games to Tasmania, North Melbourne three to the Gold Coast, Melbourne plays Sydney in Canberra, and the Bulldogs play in Canberra and Darwin. So it is indisputable fact that 10 clubs can survive in Melbourne - but only as long as they are prepared to play somewhere else.
North Melbourne refused to move to the Gold Coast when offered a $50 million package. Incoming chairman James Brayshaw promised to fix the unworkable shareholder problem and deliver five white knights who would contribute $10 million to the club. So far he has done neither. So far North's future looks no brighter than it did last year.
The NRL teams in Sydney have been hit by an increase in income tax on poker machines in the leagues clubs. So that bites hard at the bottom line of the clubs, and Gallop has predicted the death of more than one club if nothing changes. So the NRL clubs will do what the AFL clubs were forced to do: Games will be played in Perth, West Wyalong, Yarrambat, Christmas Island and Adelaide. The Gold Coast stadium will be busier than Brendan Nelson's eraser.
This is the market in which the AFL wants to push a new franchise - a western Sydney side at Blacktown. Carlton chief executive Greg Swann said on Melbourne radio that the NRL problems were of their own making - always relying on poker machine money, not building membership bases and barely chasing sponsors.
So if the NRL clubs are to survive, the league must find new money streams - the very revenue that the Blacktown side will need. Rugby union has lost millions and its momentum. It is out touting for corporate support.
The Gold Coast franchise - set down for 2011 - threatens to set back other sides in the competition, in some cases terminally. The AFL has drawn up generous benefits for the new side that most AFL club chiefs think will eventually hand the Gold Coast a superteam. As it stands, the Gold Coast recruiters have 80 picks to fill a 50 or so strong list. Only the baubles will be kept, the fool's gold discarded. Clubs are finetuning their thoughts on the AFL blueprint and fans should expect a push to have the Gold Coast's tip truck of draft picks traded for shots at uncontracted players.
If western Sydney follows and proves incompetent - as the Gold Coast might do in its early years if the drafts lack talent - the traditional teams will be starved of draft picks and condemned to a decade of mediocrity. Aware of this, the stronger clubs are already questioning the right of the weaker clubs to receive millions in the AFL's Additional Service Dividends - a less offensive term for life support. Without the ASD, 10 clubs would have been eight long ago.
Such is the sensitivity to football's future, Cappuccino Kennett all but sets AFL policy. He says Melbourne should go to the Gold Coast, and the football population consider it as fact and not as none of Cappuccino's business. Relocation is the password to emotional madness.
But Cappuccino is right. Ten clubs will not survive in Melbourne and the number of NRL clubs in Sydney will certainly shrink. Rugby union might fall over, football stand tall. Never have Australia's winter codes pushed and shoved so much to hold their ground or take new territories. For all his froth, Cappuccino is right. Melbourne should go to the Gold Coast. And North Melbourne must fly the flag in Blacktown.
Whichever code wins this confrontation has the running to be Australia's major domestic winter sport. The prize will go to the bravest."
"By Patrick Smith
May 24, 2008
DAVID Smorgon is a successful club president. He has fought a long, intense battle to keep the Western Bulldogs in the AFL. He began his task in 1996; not only has he kept the club alive, it is now beginning to flourish. He ought to be an expert on the market forces that impact on AFL clubs.
David Gallop is a successful sports administrator. He has given the NRL a sense of dignity, of purpose. He has applied standards for the game where once there seemed to be none at all. He ought to be an expert on what makes rugby league tick. He thinks several Sydney NRL clubs are on death row.
Cappuccino Kennett is president of successful club Hawthorn and knows everything about anything. He thinks Melbourne should relocate to the Gold Coast. Paul Gardner is president of Melbourne who in 2003 began saving the club from a hopeless financial position. He was able to stabilise the club but not grow it. He thinks Hawthorn should relocate to Tasmania.
Andrew Demetriou successfully runs the AFL and thinks Melbourne is now in worse shape than North Melbourne, who seriously flirted with a move to the Gold Coast last year.
As rugby league clubs consider fleeing Sydney, the AFL wants to move in to western Sydney. League is losing players to Europe, the Bulldogs' Sonny Bill Williams wants to play rugby union and New South Wales rugby coach Ewen McKenzie is sacked and then leads the Waratahs into the semi-finals of the Super 14.
Australia is on a campaign to qualify for the football World Cup, Adelaide progresses in the Asian Champions League and, more, you must tread warily wherever you walk in fear of stepping on the foundations of a new A-League club.
Sport is going every which way as the market for the sporting dollar shrinks while demand increases by the day. Everybody has run out of old money and searches for the new.
It might be that our winter codes have never been more confused. Smorgon argues that the debate whether Melbourne can support 10 clubs has been almost endless and still 10 clubs survive. He points to clubs all but hitting the wall - like Geelong - then rebounding significantly.
That is true but it is a simplistic view. At any given time, two of the 10 clubs are fighting for their very lives. Right now, it is North Melbourne and Melbourne. As one club bounces back another teeters. The 10 clubs are - as a whole - consistently under-funded because the corporate world and supporters cannot spread themselves around with enough effect to stabilise all teams.
As it is, Hawthorn sells four home games to Tasmania, North Melbourne three to the Gold Coast, Melbourne plays Sydney in Canberra, and the Bulldogs play in Canberra and Darwin. So it is indisputable fact that 10 clubs can survive in Melbourne - but only as long as they are prepared to play somewhere else.
North Melbourne refused to move to the Gold Coast when offered a $50 million package. Incoming chairman James Brayshaw promised to fix the unworkable shareholder problem and deliver five white knights who would contribute $10 million to the club. So far he has done neither. So far North's future looks no brighter than it did last year.
The NRL teams in Sydney have been hit by an increase in income tax on poker machines in the leagues clubs. So that bites hard at the bottom line of the clubs, and Gallop has predicted the death of more than one club if nothing changes. So the NRL clubs will do what the AFL clubs were forced to do: Games will be played in Perth, West Wyalong, Yarrambat, Christmas Island and Adelaide. The Gold Coast stadium will be busier than Brendan Nelson's eraser.
This is the market in which the AFL wants to push a new franchise - a western Sydney side at Blacktown. Carlton chief executive Greg Swann said on Melbourne radio that the NRL problems were of their own making - always relying on poker machine money, not building membership bases and barely chasing sponsors.
So if the NRL clubs are to survive, the league must find new money streams - the very revenue that the Blacktown side will need. Rugby union has lost millions and its momentum. It is out touting for corporate support.
The Gold Coast franchise - set down for 2011 - threatens to set back other sides in the competition, in some cases terminally. The AFL has drawn up generous benefits for the new side that most AFL club chiefs think will eventually hand the Gold Coast a superteam. As it stands, the Gold Coast recruiters have 80 picks to fill a 50 or so strong list. Only the baubles will be kept, the fool's gold discarded. Clubs are finetuning their thoughts on the AFL blueprint and fans should expect a push to have the Gold Coast's tip truck of draft picks traded for shots at uncontracted players.
If western Sydney follows and proves incompetent - as the Gold Coast might do in its early years if the drafts lack talent - the traditional teams will be starved of draft picks and condemned to a decade of mediocrity. Aware of this, the stronger clubs are already questioning the right of the weaker clubs to receive millions in the AFL's Additional Service Dividends - a less offensive term for life support. Without the ASD, 10 clubs would have been eight long ago.
Such is the sensitivity to football's future, Cappuccino Kennett all but sets AFL policy. He says Melbourne should go to the Gold Coast, and the football population consider it as fact and not as none of Cappuccino's business. Relocation is the password to emotional madness.
But Cappuccino is right. Ten clubs will not survive in Melbourne and the number of NRL clubs in Sydney will certainly shrink. Rugby union might fall over, football stand tall. Never have Australia's winter codes pushed and shoved so much to hold their ground or take new territories. For all his froth, Cappuccino is right. Melbourne should go to the Gold Coast. And North Melbourne must fly the flag in Blacktown.
Whichever code wins this confrontation has the running to be Australia's major domestic winter sport. The prize will go to the bravest."
