AFL loses tough with footy fans

AFL chief executive officer Andrew Demetriou must find a way to re-connect with footy fans. Source: Herald Sun

IN politics, these are the weeks from which governments struggle to fully recover.

When the backlash is so deep-seated, it's impossible to re-engage immediately in debate.

The risk for the AFL is it might have lost the ear of its constituency just when it needs it most.

The implausible non-tanking findings, and subsequent attempts to defend and explain the penalties, were met with widespread disbelief, prompting a level of scorn rarely endured by Headquarters.

League decisions are frequently unpopular, but the reactions to the Melbourne sanctions were something else.

Not the trifling controversies of week-to-week football but the fundamental issues of governance and trust.

Given the history, and the likely legal constraints, the AFL would have banked on a loss when it came to tanking.

The measure was in how lasting the ramifications were and what level of credibility was sacrificed.

The answer has proved significant on both counts.

At the end of the John Howard years, the electorate grew tired of self-serving explanations.

The government was viewed as tricky in manipulating outcomes for its own end.

Judging by the lack of faith expressed in nearly every quarter, the AFL administration finds itself here.

The timing is especially wretched as the executive embarks on a critical piece of policy that will reshape the competition.

How equalisation is framed in the coming six months will be felt for the next 20 years. It is vital and complicated work.

It will be difficult to explain beyond the catchy headlines proclaiming "taxes" and "caps" and notions of robbing the rich to sustain the poor.

Self-interest will skew populist opinion.

Supporters will rally to outraged claims of club officials looking to protect their accumulated wealth.

The AFL faces a formidable task to construct a formula, bring the clubs to heel and convince the public of the common good.

It's the football equivalent of the carbon tax.

To do so from a position of strength was going to be difficult.

Beginning from a diminished standing increases the magnitude tenfold.

At stake is the foundation principle that the game be decided on the field rather than off it and that the result of no game is foreordained.

The basis for this urgent re-evaluation is the commission's acceptance of the clear and growing relationship between non-TPP football department spending and on-field performance.

Unfettered, the competition will lurch towards England's Premier League, where only the few giants can win, but without any of the mid-table incentives or lower-end relegations that invigorate an English winter.

Submissions have been invited from every club.

 The tack is carefully chosen, driven by the particular circumstance of each organisation.

 Formally and informally the lobbying is under way.

In this debate undue emphasis will be placed on single suggestions.

The Bulldogs float the idea that a game attendance component of a club membership be quarantined and centralised to form part of the increased pool for distribution.

It doesn't take much imagination to predict the response of the big clubs with huge membership bases.

But the overall philosophy is where the war will be fought. What do we want the competition to look like, beyond our own team winning the flag?

In this, the AFL will undertake its most important work and find its best chance to restore the public faith.

Gerard Whateley broadcasts on ABC Grandstand and hosts AFL360 on Fox Footy

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