It doesnt mean sydney players needed a COLA allowance because Cost of living is higher in sydney.
What, are your eyes painted on?
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You are not going to win Diggers, and for what itâs worth, I actually agree with you in part. I will say though that once Sydney started ârortingâ the COLA (and they did) then it had to go and the AFL took too long to do it. The punishment the AFL did was ridiculous, especially as they created the situation in the first place (I am talking about Buddy).
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No doubt Sydney had a role in COLAâs demise however, the punishment for following the rules had more to do with offending M Fitzpatrick than any perceived or actual advantage gained. They had no issue with Sydney stitching up St Kilda (twice) when they used the COLA to secure A Lockett and then B Hall. Only difference this time is they secured the wrong bloke with it.
Why do we need the pissant Melbourne clubs? Removing drains on the financial and talent (by virtue of dilution) strength of the league by rejigging North/WB/St Kilda/Melbourne (by way of mergers/folding and moving one to Tassie) would improve the league immensely not to mention fix the draw.
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St Kilda and Melbourne are drawing more folks to the footy than lucrative pot o gold Sydney. Oops.
Donât reckon Sydney has much of a go home culture . If anything itâs a destination club and some of there blokes could get more going elsewhere since buddy gobbled up a big slab of their cap.
Sydney could bottom out these days. They probably wouldnât want to be terminally â â â â but as Brisbane will show, you can get over it.
Also yeah whole new thread. Tassie needs a team.
The comp would be richer. IMO the Sunâs should fold/merge with Brisbane.(they will prob go all super club again hopefully a little more sustainable ) and they should award a licence to Tasmania.
Football of any code struggles on the goldcoast.
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Thatâs a good question but the answer goes all the way back to the mid 1980âs. The then VFL were looking at ways to increase revenue as the prevailing income stream wasnât sufficient enough to support the league and it would have collapsed if additional money wasnât found soon. Itâs capacity to borrow money had become so limited due to falling revenue and insufficient assets that the only way to get the $8m dollars that was required to keep things going was to introduce two new teams, West Coast and Brisbane into the VFL and charge them $4m each as a joining fee. Itâs hard to believe in the 2017 context but things were so dire that in 1987, the VFL gave the broadcast rights to the ABC for free because C7 wasnât willing to pay a reasonable amount for the rights to televise the games. And why would they, only Victorians had an interest in Victorian games. And so the AFL came about not because all the state governing bodies came together to to form a new national competition for the betterment of the game, it happened because the VFL was broke and it saw this as a way to save itself from falling over. So thatâs why we have so many pissant Victorian sides in the AFL. As a footnote, you probably have noticed that a Qld side joining the VFL in 1987 and not a SA side is a bit peculiar. That happened because the SANFL told the VFL to go f*ck itself and supported itâs local competition instead. We over here didnât feel the same obligation to the local competition and that West Perth had in fact seriously investigated the possibility of joining the VFL but decided that they didnât have the resources to do it. The Indian Pacific consortium was formed and the rest is history.
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??
Also interesting read but didnât really answer what purpose Melb/StK/NM/WB serve moving forward other than wrecking the draw/finances and talent pool of the league
WCE is owned by Indian pacific
if youâre breaking it down in a dollars and ratings sense, even the pissiest Melbourne clubs go better than 3 of the 4 Northern clubs every single year and, some years, Sydney too.
The AFL has backed themselves into a corner (unlike them) of saying theyâre going to maintain all 18 til the end of time just because. Hence all the gimmes granted every year.
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Theyâre here to stay because the league gets several billion $ from the broadcast rights for an 18x team competition.
If the governing state bodies back in the day got together to form a new national competition from scratch, youâd probably have 2x sides per state, maybe 3x in WA, SA and Victoria and the broadcast deal would have evolved with it but they didnât get together together for altruistic reasons. All this happened because the VFL was broke. Itâs too late to change now but most importantly, would Essendon members support their side disappearing into history in order to form a new and more equatable competition? Like Hell they would. In fairness to the VFL, they had the desire and wherewithal to put all this together and the WA and SA comps are now rooted because we couldnât but it is what is is.
True. If I was Foxtel/7 Iâd rather a strong 14/5 team competition playing a stronger, higher quality 26/28 round comp than what we have now but I (we) digress.
This consortium of like minded individuals saw the potential of a side based in Perth playing in an expanded VFL and raised the money to put it together. Remember, the VFL needed the money and didnât care if it came from an established side or a new start up.
The first couple of years of West Coastâs existence are hard to believe. They had no facilities as none of the existing WAFL sides were prepared to provide any support as West Coast had just raided every half decent player for its side + within a few weeks they could see that the WAFL was effectively now rooted. Some local councils even banned West Coast from training on their grounds. It was unbelievable. How they won 11x games in 1987 is actually amazing.
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Maybe because they had a glorified state team
That would be better but weâre screwed into this arrangement now. That and I donât reckon the AFL has the stomach for another Fitzroy style annexing either.
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or maybe they should just increase minimum wages across the board.
They had some terrific players. R Glenndinning and R Wylie come to mind. Jonny Gastev played for them as well in 87. But no club rooms, no rehab facilities, no members, no anything.
Iâll never forget their first game against the Tigers at Subiaco. Apart from the excellent come from behind win (about 5x goals in the last qtr) the most memorable part was that a WAFL game was to be played as the main event after the West Coast game. The ground was full to watch the Eagles play but the everyone left before the WAFL game started. Everything changed right there.
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Really?
You think new hypothetical league is knocking back the drawing power of 3 or 4 of Essendon, Collingwood, Richmond, Carlton, Hawthorn, Geelong?
I think youâre really really really over-estimating how much people give a â â â â about fairness and what name is on the competition, and conversely underestimating how much they care about continuing to support the side theyâve always supported.
And no administrator or investor would want to knock back any club who could draw a 70 or 80k crowd- why would you?
A new fantasy league would start with the 6 biggest VFL clubs, or itâd eventually fail.
Like it or not, more people watch footy in Melbourne than outside it - total and average. If/when that changes, we can have a chat about their being equal footing between WA/SA $ Vic.
Iâd actually argue it happened when it did because VFL Hq was in the â â â â â â â .
Some sort of new comp/nationalisation/merger was inevitable.
Could easily have been a WSC or super league type scenario instead, invite the 6 bigger VFL clubs + 2-3 each from WAFL & SANFL.