The St Christopher accommodation

OK, let’s see if we’ve got this right. Steven Trigg, Peter Blucher and Kurt Tippett are in football stir because they dared to flaunt the AFL’s rules on the salary cap. All three participated in a deal that hid a portion of Tippett’s salary from AFL scrutiny and allowed him to be paid over the odds.

 

Pretty straight forward, really.

 

Of course, there’d been the ghostly presence of one Christopher Judd hovering menacingly in the background while the Tippett affair played itself out. How dare the Crows, Tippett and his manager concoct a deal to squeeze some extra money for a star player! The very cheek!

 

Judd’s deal with Carlton had always included a portion considered outside the salary cap which was paid by Dick Pratt via his Visy Industries operations. Judd, we were told, performed an “ambassadorial” role. Not that any of us actually saw him doing anything in this role.

 

As one wag memorably noted, Judd’s primary activity in this ambassadorial role seemed to be putting out his recycling bin each fortnight.

 

More recently, with the Tippett affair bubbling along, the AFL declared the Blues-Judd-Visy deal they’d signed off five years ago to be a little bit naughty. Include the whole $200k per year inside your salary cap, gentlemen, was the stern message to the bean counters at Princes Park.

 

Now, according to media reports, about half the Visy money is being considered part of the Blues’ injury payments and not under the salary cap.

 

Does AFL House know that the sainted Judd is a physical wreck and unlikely to see out the rigours of the season? Surely they must. How else could they countenance a deal that blatantly flies in the face of the principles Trigg, Tippett and Blucher have apparently traduced?

 

Apparently Joel Selwood and Dane Swan have similar deals.

 

AussieRulesBlog is all for the players earning a fair cop for their efforts. They endure physical punishment the rest of us would need a year to recover from, and they play again the next week! No, our beef is with the AFL.

 

As it happens, we don’t care a fig for Trigg, Tippett or Blucher, but we do think that consistency is important. Or is it simply that Trigg and Blucher didn’t cut the AFL in on the deal? Not financially perhaps, but getting their blessing for the deal before it was inked?

 

It’s unacceptable that one group is hung drawn and quartered and another is assisted to bend the rules. Let’s see some zero tolerance for salary cap abuse. Vlad and his henchmen are so keen for zero tolerance on-field, but don’t seem to apply the same principle to their own efforts.

 

It’s a pretty poor show.