AFL Pigskin Review

Who'll raise the premiership silverware this season? Read and learn.

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” – Schopenhauer

Sydney Swans celebrate winning the 2012 AFL Premiership. Image: Getty Images

Now the fact football teams throw matches has completed Schopenhauer’s journey and finally arrived as self-evident truth, AFL fans, and fans of sport, have good reason to ensure that any other matter affecting the integrity of their sport is investigated fearlessly.

But it’s easier said than done. The issue would first need to be identified, and therein lies the problem. You see, every story is like a mansion of many rooms. Most are open for inspection. Some of the more established mansions are mostly accessible, except for one forbidden room. Its door has a sign: “Warning. Do not open. Anyone entering here does so at great risk.” Even the most resolute of investigators will explore every corner of every other room, reporting their contents with intrepidity and a tough “I won’t be silenced” posture. But they know better than to open the forbidden door. Behind that door is not the issue at hand as it’s defined for us, but the reality, and the reasons for it.

For a long time, “tanking” was behind that door. No one could mention it as a possibility, and even when anyone noted that, with its automatic priority pick system, the AFL was tempting teams to throw games, they were met with the same incensed denial afforded anyone who notes, above their breath, the presence of any tea-party crashing pachyderm in the parlour. Then, courtesy of ex-Melbourne player Brock McLean, who alleged that the possibility of deliberately losing matches for the sake of priority picks was more than merely discussed at Melbourne, the tanking issue poked its head out and took its journey down the hallway. Others at Melbourne have since “rolled over” (don’t you love the way those phrases take hold? It’s almost as though all news comes from the same source). As I write, the Melbourne club is under investigation.

All the AFL was ever asked to do by right-thinking people concerned for the authenticity of their sport as a spectacle, with non-enhanced people competing on equal terms and a score at the end that reflects what really went on, was to remove the temptation. Instead, those people were forced to pay good money to watch a stew cooked before their eyes, as they shared stands with a new type of spectator: the fan who was turning up to matches in the hope of watching their team lose! That’s damage. When such fundamental harm is done to a sport, surely its ruling body has some obligation of stewardship to change it. Why is it that no one wanted to point this out?

Before the media became “enlightened” by “revelations” concerning Melbourne football club, why did they seem to mobilise every means to prevent the public exploring the possibility that it might be happening? Why did they marshal incredulity that anyone would even suggest such a thing; assemble old myths-to-live-by, like the claim that all AFL teams, no matter the circumstance, play only to win, all the time, or that such tactics would cause a “losing culture” to develop, and no club would put up with that? I can still hear them. It went on for a long time, after all. Actually, it went on for an outrageously long time. The media consists of many people with first-class analysis skills. Did they just miss the point, or deftly sidestep it, just at the very time it needed to be nailed? When we were faced with the real possibility of a final season game featuring a team or teams playing for the prized wooden spoon, and a priority pick or two was dependent on retaining last place, in front of a crowd peppered with supporters who, I repeat, actually came to see their team lose, were we, too, supposed to suspend all disbelief, not to mention anger? Faced with that prospect, were we supposed to feign consternation along with everyone else when that forward missed an open goal because he dropped it onto his boot the wrong way, knowing very well that if he kicked that goal, he might just quietly have been dropped onto the end of someone else’s boot? Were we supposed to take those astute analyses of the match on face value, as though it was real? Why did rat-smelling callers often get short shrift or sage doubt from media personalities?

But not now! Now our intrepid reporters are using their much-lauded investigative skills to retrospectively question the outcome of games played seven years ago and the moves that led to those outcomes. Because, you see, it didn’t create that “losing culture” at all clubs. Some played it very well – why wouldn’t they? – and premierships resulted, it seems. Now, bizarre selections, prolific youngster-blooding, sudden changes in rotation practice and positional movements, strategic “resting” of senior players – all of which coincided heavily with team ladder position – are all being noted as having coincided heavily with team ladder position.

So lay off Melbourne football club. They are already the Job of the AFL. Anyone who points the finger at any specific club in the wake of these “revelations” is guilty only of biased scapegoating. Why do you think the clubs themselves have little to say on the matter? Now that someone has finally come out with the unsayable, the press want to say it even louder and bolder, trampling each other in the race to be indignant. Now, apparently, it’s okay for us all to take the lid off. Now we’re allowed to fume at the damage the system has caused the game, and watch Melbourne burn.

The press has fooled not one stubbornly two-eyed fan by ante-dating its outrage. When they had the opportunity to discuss it openly, they aggressively scotched that discussion. Andrew Demetriou was still doing it, up until the AFL decided to investigate McLean’s allegations more fully. As recently as August, Demetriou casually dismissed the possibility of debate, stating that “tanking” is non-existent. Andrew’s been great for the game, but yawning in our faces while people like his “integrity officer” take frantic action behind closed doors fools no one.

Automatic priority picks have since been abolished.

Let’s see what other forbidden ideas take a similar journey. You’ll note, for example, that the matter of performance-enhancing drugs is never up for discussion. It still lurks behind the door. Have you ever noticed why it’s never up for discussion, let alone investigation? Because it has a near-identical twin: the self-evident truth that AFL players take social drugs. This twin is on permanent display in one of the accessible rooms. We’re allowed to talk about it all day. Any sport-loving member of the public knows that these twins are essentially profoundly different. One is an urgent social desideratum; the other is a monstrous scandal that affects the game, its “brand” and the public on many levels. Try to bring the latter out from behind its forbidden door and hear those myths-to-live-by. And I’m not even accusing anyone of taking them. I’m talking about mere mention of the possibility. I can hear them now: “Our sport doesn’t lend itself to performance-enhancing drugs”; “Our players get tested more than anyone”; “What about all those busts for recreational drugs over the last few years? That shows we’re on the ball”; “Our game has always been clean”; “We are in the post-drug-cheat era.”