by: Patrick Smith
From: The Australian
November 03, 2012 12:00AM
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IF the AFL Commission is as good as it wants us to believe; if its governance is as strict as it boasts, then it must do one thing immediately.
It must demand AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou appear before his eight fellow commissioners and explain why he so fiercely denied tanking was a critical issue in football when clearly it was.
Demetriou has shouted down, ridiculed and belittled anyone who suggested that sides were endeavouring to ensure the line-ups they placed on the field would be unable to win matches.
The commissioners and Demetriou have been in power when sides regularly set about to deliberately lose matches as club football departments sought to gain the best possible picks in the draft, including priority selections.
The Australian reported yesterday that Melbourne football manager Chris Connolly threatened staff with the sack if they did not follow a directive not to win enough matches that the club lost its competitive advantage in the 2009 draft.
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Other reports on the AFL investigation into Melbourne's match strategies that have appeared in The Age and Herald Sun through the week undeniably prove Melbourne was trying to earn the best possible draft picks even if it compromised the chance of victory.
Melbourne was not the only club and 2009 not the only year. While the AFL offered such rich prizes - high draft picks and priority selections - for consistently underperforming clubs, football departments could not resist the challenge to manipulate their positions on the ladder.
Demetriou remains adamant that clubs did not tank. He uses a very narrow definition of tanking. Demetriou's understanding allows for only direct action taken on the field of play - instructing a player to deliberately kick a point when a goal would have won the match - as tanking. According to Demetriou, putting inferior players on the field, resting elite ones, playing others in unsuitable positions, taking influential players off the ground are all examples of list management and experimentation. They do not define tanking.
When The Weekend Australian asked Demetriou whether the commission deserved an explanation, he said it did not and that, in fact, it should not be presumed that his fellow commissioners did not share his views on tanking. Well, that is simply frightening.
The AFL Commission and administration have weakened the integrity of their competition, not by merely holding such a tight definition of tanking. But when it was suggested that certain matches were suspicious for tanking tinkering, the official response was lame. Half-hearted inquiries consisted of a phone call and, sometimes, a review of game tape.
So when Carlton's Brock McLean, a former Melbourne player in 2009, said on Fox Footy in July that Blind Freddy could see that the Demons were not trying to win, the subsequent investigation by the AFL was expected to be the normal one-question inquisition. "Did you tank?" "Nope" "Fair enough".
But to the credit of Adrian Anderson and his football department investigators, it has been a dogged and expansive inquiry which has unearthed damning evidence that Melbourne had made draft picks a priority ahead of victory.
Yesterday club chairman Don McLardy addressed supporters: "The board of the MFC is concerned to ensure that the MFC is treated fairly and properly. The board will fully co-operate with an independent, lawful and transparent process," he wrote on the club's website.
"The board has sought an assurance from the AFL that natural justice will be afforded to the MFC, its players, employees and staff through the investigation."
Demetriou's refusal to expand his definition of tanking has severely hurt the AFL's credibility. The fans became bewildered, then cynical, when they could see what the AFL didn't or wouldn't. Now it is the fans that are being proved correct.
The commission must take a heavy load of blame. It has overseen a competition where supporters considered tanking commonplace yet the ruling body did not oversee any rigorous examination of team tactics. Instead, it seemed to rely on Demetriou's sweeping claim that tanking allegations were nonsense. This from a competition that boasts it prides itself on the integrity of its league yet did little to protect it.
There are signs that the commission is attempting to take greater control of the administration of the sport. Whether the recent and unexpected departure of several key administrative personnel is linked to that is unclear. However, it knocked back a recommendation from Demetriou's football department to limit the number of interchanges to 70 next season, a veto it has very rarely - if ever - used on technical match-day matters.
The commission also appears to have ignored Demetriou's loud defence of criticism about cost-of-living allowance for this year's premier Sydney. "This is a knee-jerk reaction from clubs because Kurt Tippett wants to play for Sydney, because he admires Sydney," Demetriou said at the time. "No club complaining about this has any real evidence about differentials in housing costs."
Demetriou also said the matter was not on the agenda for discussion at the last commission meeting. Yet at that meeting the commissioners agreed to review Sydney's $800,000 cost-of-living allowance that is incorporated into their salary cap. Demetriou denied to The Weekend Australian this was a personal rebuff, but just the workings of a commission meeting.
If the commissioners are putting Demetriou under greater scrutiny - his deputy, Gillon McLachlan, recently knocked back the main NRL job, so back-up is at hand - then it needs to scrutinise his stance on tanking. Having done that, it needs then to examine why its com-missioners remained so passive as their product's good name was being trashed. The AFL has lost its strut and Demetriou must be held to account.
When is Mr Demetriou going to put a end to this......terrible leadership on this issue....
