Tanking is natural selection in action. =D>
In light of Brock McLean’s comments on Monday night’s On The Couch, the ugly issue of tanking has resurfaced in the sea of AFL discourse.
Some commentators, such as Mark Robinson, have used this opportunity to condemn the practice. In Wednesday’s Herald Sun Robinson called for the AFL to take serious action against clubs that throw matches in the future.
This comes as the AFL has announced an investigation into McLean’s comments about Melbourne underperforming in 2009.
But the AFL don’t need to enforce sanctions. Clubs that are stupid enough to tank will inevitably fail in their vain efforts to mount the ladder. It’s natural selection in action.
Melbourne finished the 2009 season in 16th place and was by far one of the worst teams in the league. But few could argue that Melbourne performed as well as it could have that year. Call it experimentation, list management or tanking – Melbourne wanted to win less than five games in 2009 and they succeeded.
Looking at Melbourne circa 2012, however, you wouldn’t call it a success.
Consistently finishing last – and subsequently scoring high draft picks – has not done the Demons much good since 2009. They have since won 16 games in almost three seasons, finishing no higher than 12th on the AFL ladder. They have also changed coaches twice in this time to compound the two coaching changes they endured in 2007.
To make matters worse, the club has endured a season of turmoil on and off the field in 2012. They are not likely to make the finals for another two seasons and currently possess the most ineffective midfield in the competition.
You could name a number of reasons for this current predicament. But the conscious decision of the club during the Bailey era to put draft choices over on-field performance surely has something to do with it.
During those years, tanking instituted a losing culture at Melbourne. Not only were players exposed to an environment in which losing was acceptable, but the club’s most successful contributors were being forced out from above.
The head honchos at Melbourne showed a complete lack of respect to the club’s senior players. A lot has been said about the James McDonald dismissal – arguably the worst decision of Bailey’s tenure – but other club champions also got a rough deal.
None of Adem Yze, Jeff White, Russell Robertson, Travis Johnstone, Paul Wheatley, Matthew Whelan, Brad Miller and Cameron Bruce got to leave the Demons on their terms. Combined with McDonald, this group represented Melbourne over 1700 times. They played in numerous finals series together and knew the value of winning.
Bailey inevitably had to prematurely end the careers of some of these players in order to breed a new generation of Demons. But given that most of these men could probably still get a game with the club today, it seems ridiculous that such a huge amount of experience was chopped in such a short space of time.
In the meantime, the club failed to recognise the talents of Simon Buckley (now a regular ball magnet at Collingwood) and Shane Valenti (a proven AFL performer now dominating the VFL). They cut these players – and traded away their best midfielders in McLean and Johnstone – in the hope of capitalising on fresh blood in the drafts.
Yet the draft has not given the Demons even a slight advantage over their rivals.
In the months following 2009’s wooden spoon finish, the Demons picked up Tom Scully, Jack Trengove and Jordan Gysberts in the first round of the draft.
Number-one selection Scully failed to live up to expectations in his first two seasons at the club. From 2010 to 2011, Scully only played a handful of decent games before landing arguably the most lucrative contract in the history of the AFL. Now he is underperforming in Blacktown.
Second choice Trengove has made a solid start to his career, this year becoming the youngest player to ever captain his club. If we’re to play the horrible hindsight game, however, he hasn’t done any better than fellow 2009 choices Dustin Martin, Lewis Jetta, Nathan Fyfe and Sam Reid.
Gysberts, meanwhile, is playing in the seconds. While the dual-Rising Star nominated midfielder has huge potential, he has spent much of the year languishing at VFL level with fellow unfulfilled talents. These include Cale Morton, who could have been a number-one pick in 2007, Ricky Petterd (#30, 2006) and Lucas Cook (#12 in 2010).
This is no indictment on this trio; each could still play a vital role in Melbourne’s re-build over the following seasons. But if these players were drafted into a club with a strong culture of winning and a value for old heads, who knows where they would be now?
A fleeting glance at the progress of Collingwood’s young crop puts Melbourne to shame. Fourth-year players Dayne Beams and Steele Sidebottom are bordering on superstar status, while youngsters such as Alex Fasolo and Ben Sinclair have slotted into the side with ease.
Gysberts, Morton, Petterd and Cook aren’t the only Melbournians to have not developed. For a five-year period in the late 2000s, Melbourne had more Rising Star nominees than any other club. Of those past up-and-comers only Jared Rivers and Nathan Jones have since matured into consistent leaders of the football club.
The moral of the story is that teams which tank punish themselves. While a few clubs have succeeded at manipulating the draft system, most have failed.
Draft picks and young kids do not equate to success. On the contrary a strong club ethos, constant player development and sensible list management is critical. Melbourne has failed in each of these regards and is paying the cost.
The AFL thus doesn’t need to enforce rules and regulations on tanking. If teams are foolish enough to try the supposed tactic, they will simply punish themselves.
There is something seriously wrong with the culture of the AFL and it’s supporters if there continues to be a broad ‘acceptance’ of what, in reality, is match fixing.
Match fixing is all about per determined outcomes.
Match fixing is criminal.
Why aren’t the Victorian Police involved?
Why isn’t there a betting enquiry? Punters are waging on matches where the results are already known to one side.
This stinks. This stinks bad.
Fumbles put AFL bosses firmly in spotlightNever mind AFL will pour a few million more dollars into GC and buy them a shiny new forward just in time for the ball.
Is it just me or is the tanking issue just a tiny problem in comparison to the artificially manufactured competition the AFL has become? Is it just me or is drafting players a soul destroying process for club’s player’s and supporters’.
Is it just me or does supporting an AFL club seem harder than ever?
Former Richmond coach Terry Wallace says AFL has to do more to eradicate tanking; calls for draft lotteryTOMORROW night's blockbuster between Hawthorn and Geelong should be a beauty. And it certainly can't come quickly enough for the AFL, which needs a win far more desperately than either the Cats or Hawks.
This has been a pretty ordinary little period for league football on several levels, but more specifically the way it is being administered, with this week's re-emergence of the tanking issue just the latest thorny problem to confront the league.
The cumulative bottom line is a football public whose faith in the powers-that-be to oversee the game has been eroded to depths as low as I can remember, at least since the mid-1990s, when the AFL was attempting to merge several clubs out of existence.
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There's the tanking controversy that refuses to die. There's continued griping about the various contradictions and the inconsistency of the judicial arm of the game through the match review panel and tribunal.
There's a video referral system for disputed goal-umpiring decisions, which remains clunky, and for which the technology remains inadequate despite it first having been mooted about 18 months before it was introduced. There's increasing grumbles about the injury rate and scepticism about the AFL's methodology in attempting to reduce it, even the veracity of the figures which claim it is, in fact, on the decline.
There's continued and more vociferous complaints about the uneven fixture and the advantages handed those who get to play the competition weaklings twice, plus real concerns from the clubs about the length of the season, the toll taken on players and the quality of the spectacle they're providing.
On that purely aesthetic level, there are a couple of new teams getting ritually smashed, with the prospect of a lot more floggings to come.
And underpinning all the discontent, a deeply rooted cynicism about the AFL administration's capacity to put things right, which - going back to the clumsy handling of the affair involving AFL community engagement manager Jason Mifsud at the start of the season - subsequent events have only enshrined.
The fact the guffawing continues at the league's vigorous denials that tanking has ever taken place shows the stock the public puts in the league's fairly rudimentary ''investigation'' last year when departing Melbourne coach Dean Bailey alluded to the practice. And the decision to investigate further after the Brock McLean revelations seems only to confirm the inadequacy of those initial interrogations.
Match review panel findings are now known as a form of football ''chooklotto'', the head apparently sacrosanct in cases like Jack Ziebell's, not so in this week's deliberations on Scott Thompson.
We've had legislation on the run via the slide tackle controversy, a virtual admission on the tanking front that the AFL hasn't asked enough questions, and, on the lack of competitiveness of Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney, acting chief executive Gillon McLachlan conceding, ''I think we probably underestimated the amount of pain''.
All that doesn't engender confidence they're getting anything much right of late. And one thing the AFL bosses really wouldn't want to underestimate right now is the extent to which they're on the nose with their football public.
THE AFL has two choices.Former Richmond and Western Bulldogs coach Terry Wallace has criticised the AFL for not doing more to prevent tanking as the fallout from Brock McLean's interview on FOX FOOTY's On The Couch continues to dominate the footy world.
McLean's assertion on Monday that Melbourne Demons purposely under-performed in his final year at the club to win high draft picks has put the issue of tanking firmly back into the spotlight.
Wallace is no stranger to the issue having been at the helm of a struggling Richmond side between 2005 and 2009.
Speaking to FOX FOOTY'S AFL 360 on Wednesday night, Wallace said he never instructed his team to under-perform nor did he intentionally under-perform as a coach during his time at Punt Rd.
But he did slam the AFL for not doing more to eradicate situations where a club would benefit from losing games.
"You have a system where there is some form of advantage by having the last selection," Wallace said.
"What happens if we get a kid, who comes through the under-18 championships next year and he kicks 14 goals in every single game he plays, he's six-foot-seven and he's the greatest thing we've ever seen arrive in the land?
"At the moment we have a situation where teams can actually work themselves into that situation to pick up that player.
"Why don't we just take it out of the equation? Why don't we put in a lottery system where you don't know so it's not even a question."
The NBA uses a lottery system to allocate draft picks, with the teams who miss out of the play-offs getting at least one ball in the lottery.
The lottery is weighted so that the team with the worst record has the best chance to obtain a higher draft pick.
Wallace said the AFL should have been more proactive when tanking first raised its head towards the end of last decade.
While Wallace resigned as Tigers coach before the infamous Richmond v Melbourne clash in 2009 that is at the centre of McLean's allegations, he was at the helm during the bizarre finish to the 2007 season.
In the final round of that season, bottom-placed Richmond faced St Kilda in a match that some suggested they would be better off losing as it would see them receive a higher draft pick for finishing last on the ladder.
The Tigers did lose the match to finish with the wooden spoon and secure gun midfielder Trent Cotchin with their No.1 pick in the draft later that year.
The Richmond-St Kilda game was played the day before the infamous 'Kreuzer Cup' between Melbourne and Carlton, which saw the Blues secure the services of boom ruckman Matthew Kreuzer after losing the match and receiving a priority draft pick.
"It's the first time in 30 years where I've been involved in football as a player or a coach where I've felt compromised doing my job," Wallace said at the time.
"And we've just got to do something about it. We've got to fix it."
In the five years since, Wallace said the AFL has done little to eradicate the problem apart from abolishing the priority pick.
"That was the last round of 2007 and I thought the integrity of the game was threatened at that stage," he said on Wednesday night.
From the AFL to the Olympics - 'tanking' controversy hits London.First, hold a royal commission into the stain that is tanking. Seek the evidence that most football fans believe exists and penalise all clubs involved.
Start with Melbourne, then make calls to Essendon, Richmond, Carlton, West Coast and Collingwood, or any team for that matter.
The second choice is to offer an amnesty to all teams, just as they did in 1993-94 to rein in salary-cap cheating, and then set penalties for any future transgressions.
It's a last chance. If you blow it - just as Melbourne, Essendon and finally Carlton did in rorting player payments - then you get a holiday from the national draft, because, after all, it is draft tampering.
There is a third choice. That revolves around the AFL "interviewing" people - this time Brock McLean, the previous time Dean Bailey - and determining after 15 minutes that the person didn't really mean "tanking" and instead it was code for list management and list building. Let's hope they take it more seriously.
Despite what most of us believe, including the converted Kevin Bartlett, the AFL doesn't believe in tanking. It hates the word.
It's why in February it removed the special assistance selection in the national draft to try to eradicate any "tanking" discussion in the public. It wasn't good for the good game, it said.
Wonder what the AFL thought of McLean's revelation?
This wasn't a pub discussion. It was between a mature McLean and Mike Sheahan, Paul Roos and Gerard Healy.
Certainly, that esteemed trio didn't rock back on the couch in utter disbelief.
Finally, a player had admitted his club - then Melbourne - did not try to win. Not the players, but a higher power via instructions.
It followed Bailey's assertion at his sacking press conference last year.
"I was asked to do the best thing by the Melbourne Football Club and I did it," Bailey said.
McLean said on Monday night: "I sat down with Dean Bailey and I brought that up with him and told him what I really thought. We were both on the same page."
So we have a coach and player admitting that elements at their club wanted defeat rather than victory. Think about that. A coach and a player.
You'd like to think the AFL would go after these claims with as much tenacity as they did when Essendon assistant Dean Wallis had a bet on the footy, or a timekeeper's assistant had a few bucks on the first goalkicker?
If betting strikes at the heart of integrity, then what in the bloody hell is throwing matches?
Instead of protecting the game's image, the AFL needs to save it.
If McLean's comments are ignored, the AFL just might be Blind Freddy's deaf cousin.
http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/news ... 42166.aspxCHINESE badminton players, two of which are among the eight women disqualified from the Olympics for deliberately throwing matches to improve their draws, have been accused of manipulating competitions habitually in a sport the nation rules.
As women from the tainted doubles competition finished their quarter-finals, following the ejection of four South Korean, two Chinese and two Indonesian opponents ruled to have tanked their games, many spoke out angrily about the scourge of match manipulation that stands to severely damage badminton’s reputation and threatens its Olympic existence.
Of the many players who took aim at the badminton superpower of China after competition on Wednesday night, Danish duo Kamilla Rytter Juhl and Christinna Pedersen, who bowed out after losing a quarter final to Japan, were the most condemning.
‘‘I don’t know if it’s only China, but I have seen them do it before,’’ Juhl, a former world and European champion in the mixed doubles, said of the blatant match throwing that occurred on Tuesday night.
‘‘I think many of the other countries are thinking about doing the same, but it’s so far away from me that it’s difficult to understand. It’s more like a job for them. They work for the federation and for me it’s my life and my living, but I think they get paid from their federation.
‘‘They’re just good at acting normally. Normally they play a little bit more, or they can also just retire if they have an injury, but again they can play the week after. We have seen that many times.
‘‘I get so sad every time I see it. All of us players are talking about it and now they did it again and it’s a big problem.
‘‘I think it has been like that for many years, actually, but especially in the Olympic year.
‘‘They can only play (properly) when it’s China against China in tournament. Then they can play like a real match.’’
Yu Chin Chien, who represented Taipei in the women’s doubles, said through an interpreter: ‘‘They should be disqualified, the Chinese players. It definitely is a very bad image for the sport because even a political show in Taipei is discussing this issue.’’
This last article is a little of topic, but the title of the article tells me that it is widely known in the Aussie community that the AFL has a tanking problem, time to open your eyes guys.
Blind Freddy you there....
Thank god the AFL have started to address it as its an awful blight on the modern competition.