Someone signed the stadium deals

Some nine and a bit years after the Docklands stadium burst onto the AFL scene, some clubs are discovering their deals to play at the stadium are toxic. North Melbourne CEO, Eugene Arocca claims the club will have to write out a cheque to stadium management after their upcoming home fixture against Port Adelaide. One assumes future fixtures at the venue against other non-Victorian teams are likely to generate the same result.

Someone from North Melbourne signed the deal with Docklands management. Did they have their eyes closed at the time? Did they read the small print, or was it treated like a credit card or mobile phone contract?

IF the deals for North, St Kilda and the Western Bulldogs are as toxic as reports suggest, it's surely not the stadium's fault. The question a sensible person could ask is whether club management at the time were incompetent.

Of course, the elephant in this room is the commercial basis for ownership of the Docklands stadium. Stadium owners' borrowings have to be managed, along with operational costs. Were the finance a public-sector arrangement, perhaps with State Government guarantee, the interest rate would be lower, logically leading to lower operating costs.

It should also be remarked at this point that the AFL did, relatively recently, possess a fully-owned stadium, in AFL Park, which could have been further developed to the original planned capacity IF various State Governments had honoured promises to provide public transport infrastructure to service the site.