The AFL's determination to create a senior-level AFL team on the Gold Coast seems to know no bounds. The announced draft concessions appear to be incredibly generous — until you consider the average lifespan of AFL draftees and the success rate of high-level draft picks.

The kids being drafted to Gold Coast will also be entitled to feel somewhat short-changed. There's not going to be a cohort of experienced team leaders with substantial AFL pedigrees to provide the leadership, on and off the field, that these youngsters will need for them to have a reasonable chance of a successful AFL career.

Of course, it's the very determination to create the Gold Coast presence that makes these measures necessary.

It would be sad to see the courts being drawn into the draft system, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for these kids to feel that being drafted to Gold Coast potentially diminishes their capacity to earn a living (and set themselves up for life if they're smart) in AFL.

Brisbane would do well to recall the debacle that was Tim Watson's coaching career before appointing Michael Voss to succeed Leigh Matthews. The parallels between Voss and Watson are too similar to be easily discounted.

Clearly, there's a world of difference between offering comments on a media broadcast and taking on the role of head coach of an AFL club. In fact, it would be foolhardy not to recognise that the demands on senior coaches have grown in the years since Watson's ill-fated tenure at St Kilda.

And then there's the matter that Voss' contributions to the media broadcasts have been less than earth-shattering...

Dear Chaps,

As 2008 dwindles to a close, thoughts turn to 2009. I wonder if we could look forward to the unusual spectacle of consistent interpretations of rules through the length of the 2009 season? Would it be too much to ask that, at the close of the 2009 season, TV and radio callers don’t have just cause to remark that a particular rule has “disappeared”.

And while we’re at it, perhaps we could instruct the umpires at each game to rely on what they actually see? Too often field umpires make crucial decisions from one hundred metres away, or when the ball is on the blind side of the pack.

We could also have a rethink of the advantage rule, lining players up to “kick over the mark” and then allowing them to play on to one side or even backwards, chopping the arms in a marking contest and incidental contacts of all sorts.

Apart from those things, you've all done very well!

Watching the last quarter of the Hawthorn v. Carlton game in round 22, it was hard to escape the conclusion that Brendan Fevola plays predominantly for himself. As the end of his football year crept ever closer, Fevola’s feverish, nay, almost manic, efforts to gain possession of the ball to kick his hundredth goal were almost comical — had they not been such a sad reflection on the man’s motivations.

At the other end, by way of contrast, was a more team-oriented player. Admittedly, with quarters and weeks to spare, Franklin could afford to be sanguine, but it’s difficult to imagine him making such a spectacle of himself.

I suspect Carlton will struggle to make a real impact on the competition while Fevola remains within their ranks. One selfish apple can taint the whole barrel — as the Tigers know to their cost.

I image I'm about to commit public heresy, but here goes anyway. Robert Harvey is not a champion or a superstar of aussie rules. He is, at best, a superlative athlete who gathered a large number of possessions through an extraordinarily long career.

In my view, a champion can turn a game by their own efforts. I'm thinking of the likes of Buckley, Voss, Hird, Carey, Ablett Snr in more recent times. “Champion”, you may have gathered, is a term I consider has been bestowed overenthusiastically, not to mention the now almost ubiquitous sobriquet of "superstar".

What opposition coach would have lain awake wondering whether Robert Harvey would cut his team to ribbons? None.

So, well done Robert Harvey, for enduring the physical demands of playing and preparing for twenty-one seasons.

(with apologies to Mr Dickens)

Some years ago, at the height of the fallout over Gary Ablett Snr’s drug and booze-fuelled involvement with the death of Alicia Horan, I wrote to The Age condemning the Coroner's criticism of Ablett as a role model. In that letter, I made the point that Ablett would not have consciously taken on the mantle of “role model” later assigned to him by some (see below).

The same, however, cannot be said of Heath and Rhyce Shaw and Alan Didak. By the time these young men entered the ranks of AFL players, society’s expectations of the privileged few were crystal clear. I heard someone say, in the aftermath of their disastrous binge, that they’d been “hung out to dry”. I would contend that this is a misreading of the situation.

The facts are that these young men are considered elite athletes. Their club, their club’s supporters and the football world in general are entitled to expect that they act the part. By all means get blitzed on Mad Monday, but during the season we should be free of reports of drink driving, public urination and the like involving AFL-listed players.

If these young men, incidentally being paid pretty substantial amounts of money to be elite athletes, are so wedded to boozing through the season, let them play in a suburban or country team where their mates will be doing the same thing.

Times have changed; expectations have changed. AFL clubs need to ensure that club cultures also change.

==========================================================
Letter to the Editor, The Age, 31 March, 2001:

Two high-profile AFL figures have been pilloried during this last week. One gained his profile through his business acumen and standing in the community. The other gained his profile exclusively through physical prowess. The community has, unfairly in my opinion, this week expected the same rectitude of both men.

The coronial report handed down on Thursday has seriously overstepped the mark in censuring Gary Ablett for failing a responsibility as a community hero and role model. The Coroner has mistakenly decided that public acclamation automatically confers the ability to make fine moral judgements. Nothing could be further from reality.

Ablett's status in our community derives solely from his ability to play Australian Rules football. His former manager, speaking on the 7:30 Report, described his life skills as "basic". His relationship with an adoring public has always been more-or-less one-way.

The football clubs who recruited Ablett did so based on his footballing abilities rather than his life skills. Whether they or his management should have so protected him from life is another issue and one that the AFL Players Association in particular seems keen to address. The footballing public marvelled at his deeds on the football field, not at his ability to live a fine, upstanding private life.

It is troubling then that a responsible government official should apparently be so caught up in the hysterical fan worship of Ablett that responsibilities and roles he neither wanted nor was prepared for are arbitrarily assigned to him.

The other figure, Carlton President John Elliott, has been a part of the business and political establishment and might reasonably be expected to understand the import of his comments and actions. By undertaking the office of President of an AFL football club he also freely and knowingly accepts responsibilities as a 24-hour-a-day symbol of the club. It is a matter of record that he treats these responsibilities with scant regard.

Elliott is rightly asked to account for his actions. He is clearly responsible for them even if he chooses to thumb his nose at orthodoxy. While the death of Ms Horan is indeed sad, it is grossly inappropriate to saddle Ablett with responsibility for the actions of another adult.
Neither Elliott nor Ablett are good role models. The difference is that one achieved his position understanding the consequences.

Despite annual assurances by the umpiring administrators that their charges do not target certain rules or interpretations at certain times, it seems there's been another blitz by AFL umpires in recent weeks. Fifty-metre penalties seem to be all the rage, with one being handed out this past weekend because the offending player pointed at the umpire! It may be reasonable to expect players to show respect to the officials and to penalise threatening words and gestures or accusations of bias, but pointing?

Some senior umpires also appear to be fundamentalists. That is, they adhere to the strict letter of the law. Thus we have players on their feet penalised when a player dives head first at their legs and others penalised when their arms brush, incidentally, against their opponent's in a marking contest.

Not for the first time this season, I have the AFL's umpiring department (and Rules Committee) in my sights.

Watching an unusual number of TV games this weekend, I was struck by the number of free kicks paid against players who were standing when their opponents cannoned, head first, into their legs. What, in heavens’ name, is the standing player supposed to do? Fine let's keep the head sacrosanct (but only give Kerr three weeks for a deliberate roundarm punch: consistency?), but surely we can apply a little practical understanding of the game? The standing player in this scenario has nowhere to go to avoid making contact. This interpretation of high contact is an unqualified nonsense.

A second instance of incidental contact occurs in marking contests where one player’s arm or hand brushes the other player’s arm INCIDENTALLY. Please Jeff, it doesn’t matter whether the player doesn't hold the mark after such incidental contact. Does the contact drag the player’s arm away? That must be the only criterion.

There is so much incidental contact in the game, so much of which appears to be in plain view of an umpire, yet it seems random events are chosen to be penalised. Umpires must be given the freedom to judge within the context of the game, rather than inconsistently and imperfectly applying a zero tolerance standard.

Lastly, the AFL tell us the Rules Committee are trying to improve the image, speed and continuity of our game (leave it alone!! — but let's leave that aside for a moment). On Saturday we had the 'spectacle' of a full back waiting to be called to play on before walking backward to 'rush' a point in order to waste time. This is the same AFL that awards a free kick against a player kicking or punching a ball after it has crossed the boundary line. This is the same AFL that had its umpires awarding 50m penalties for TOUCHING a player after an uncontested mark (where has that interpretation gone?). Those penalties are for WASTING TIME. What the hell was Bowden doing?

Andrew? Jeff? Oh, what a tangled web we weave...