If the Eagles had never come in

[Silent Alarm]

Let alone the Dockers, how do you think the WAFL would be today?

Would East Fremantle dominate, considering how many AFL footballers they produce? Would Peel be a bit a powerhouse with some zoning concessions? Is Perth nothing but a merged or demoted entity? Would we have two or three grounds; Subi, Fremantle, and Joondalup?

How do you think a WAFL in 2013 would be?

 

[masai]

Perth "gobbled" up by the Duckies.

 

[DardySingh360]

There would most likely be some WAFL teams playing in a national competition and the rest in a WA State Comp. very real chance that had the Eagles not come in the VFL could've gone under, no doubt a national competition would have formed

 

[Chris who]

There would most likely be some WAFL teams playing in a national competition and the rest in a WA State Comp. very real chance that had the Eagles not come in the VFL could've gone under, no doubt a national competition would have formed

east perth would still be without a premiership since 78

 

[Spearhead]

Interestingly despite all the hoo haa about how the WCE/Freo have saved WA football there is now probably less people attending the football in WA than there was in the late 70's & early 80's ..the WCE & Freo games at Subi rarely get over 35k in attendance whereas the 4 WAFL matches attendance each week back in the day averaged over 10k!

 

[lloydbraun]

Interestingly despite all the hoo haa about how the WCE/Freo have saved WA football there is now probably less people attending the football in WA than there was in the late 70's & early 80's ..the WCE & Freo games at Subi rarely get over 35k in attendance whereas the 4 WAFL matches attendance each week back in the day averaged over 10k!

Without bothering to look it up due to laziness, I'd say WCE+Freo often attract $35k+ to games, particularly WCE, then there would be the WAFL crowd, though I am guessing that would only attract around 6000 per round on average?

More people probably watch on TV nowadays.

 

[Moo]

The Longmuir/Van Berlo Cardinal Dynasty would be easing off just about now

 

[chibimatty]

Maybe the "Perth" team would be an East-West merged team representing the inner city, north of the river? I don't know whether the Demons would still be around at all. Maybe they would be south of the river, Cannington or Armadale now.

One thing for certain, that WAFL Grand Final day would be pretty sweet!

 

[mianfei]

There would most likely be some WAFL teams playing in a national competition and the rest in a WA State Comp. very real chance that had the Eagles not come in the VFL could've gone under, no doubt a national competition would have formed

That is what was proposed in the middle 1980s when both the VFL and WAFL were in terrible financial trouble due to low attendances, largely due to Australia’s inability to update its public transportation to permit people from new suburbs to attend games. It was this (inherent with our rich mineral resources and consequent all-powerful road lobby) political problem that forced the transformation to a television-based game and a national competition.

If the proposed national competition had formed, it is possible that the weaker clubs in the VFL (e.g. St. Kilda, North Melbourne, Footscray, Fitzroy) and the WAFL (Perth, Swan Districts, probably others) would have gone extinct in the 1980s. It would have formed a very different national competition, maybe one without the unfairness of today’s AFL in terms of ground rationalisation and the draw, but potentially in some ways even more removed from the traditions of football for the sake of commercialism.

 

[MortlockWatcher]

The WAFL and SANFL stuck strong for a lot of the 1980s, with the Croweaters' ultimate aim being to have the VFL back down and have a 12 team national league (max. 6 Victorian clubs), instead of the national league being just an extended VFL (sound familiar?).

Unfortunately, the WAFL couldn't wait and sidled with a Brisbane consortium and the rest they say is history.

The national league would have been so different if the WAFL had waited a couple more years and stuck fat with the SANFL, as the VFL was only a year or two away from having sides fold due to their parlous financial state (and the others that survived would have dropped down to the VFA). The $8million from the Bears and Eagles gave each of the 12 VFL clubs about $650,000 each to fix up their messes ... Fitzroy advised Ross Oakley prior to a VFL meeting that they were going to announce to the clubs that they were going to fold as they were broke and unable to operate any longer. Oakley said to hold on until the end of the meeting as 'you'll have hundreds of thousands of reasons to keep quiet'. Less than an hour later, the Bears and Eagles had solved the finiancial problems of many of the Victorian clubs.

We have people like Oakley and the WAFL management at the time to thank for drafts, salary caps, uneven draws, etc. instead of having natural progression and the right result occur.

The remaining five or six WAFL clubs, I suppose, would have linked up in a way with the SFL (pinching some of their clubs or else a merger) to change the Perth footy landscape. As we saw later, the Kalgoorlie Miners never went ahead and Bunbury never entered a side so I don't think we ever would have gone down the regional path further than where we are now.

 

[Chris who]

The WAFL and SANFL stuck strong for a lot of the 1980s, with the Croweaters' ultimate aim being to have the VFL back down and have a 12 team national league (max. 6 Victorian clubs), instead of the national league being just an extended VFL (sound familiar?).

Unfortunately, the WAFL couldn't wait and sidled with a Brisbane consortium and the rest they say is history.

The national league would have been so different if the WAFL had waited a couple more years and stuck fat with the SANFL, as the VFL was only a year or two away from having sides fold due to their parlous financial state (and the others that survived would have dropped down to the VFA). The $8million from the Bears and Eagles gave each of the 12 VFL clubs about $650,000 each to fix up their messes ... Fitzroy advised Ross Oakley prior to a VFL meeting that they were going to announce to the clubs that they were going to fold as they were broke and unable to operate any longer. Oakley said to hold on until the end of the meeting as 'you'll have hundreds of thousands of reasons to keep quiet'. Less than an hour later, the Bears and Eagles had solved the finiancial problems of many of the Victorian clubs.

We have people like Oakley and the WAFL management at the time to thank for drafts, salary caps, uneven draws, etc. instead of having natural progression and the right result occur.

The remaining five or six WAFL clubs, I suppose, would have linked up in a way with the SFL (pinching some of their clubs or else a merger) to change the Perth footy landscape. As we saw later, the Kalgoorlie Miners never went ahead and Bunbury never entered a side so I don't think we ever would have gone down the regional path further than where we are now.

The waca and east perth would have hamstrung the wafl and admitted their own team to the VFl. Much like what port did. Port were to be admitted, so the sanfl gave in and launched the crows

 

[mianfei]

The waca and east perth would have hamstrung the wafl and admitted their own team to the VFl. Much like what port did. Port were to be admitted, so the sanfl gave in and launched the crows

That’s hard to believe, given that East Perth between 1985 and 1990 won only 33 of 126 matches and were extremely lucky not to have four wooden spoons instead of two - whereas in that 1989 SANFL Grand Final Port Adelaide seemed to make the Eagles’ defence of autumn 1991 look second-rate!

It’s possible that if East Perth had done what they planned before 1983 when they were still a power in the WAFL the story would have been different. However, because the road lobby’s power was less fully muscled and Collingwood and Richmond remained powers on-field, in that period attendances had not declined so much as they would in the middle 1980s. Without the losses caused by poor attendances in the middle 1980s, the VFL might not have gone national.

 

[Albert Ross]

The national league would have been so different if the WAFL had waited a couple more years and stuck fat with the SANFL, as the VFL was only a year or two away from having sides fold due to their parlous financial state (and the others that survived would have dropped down to the VFA).

This is the commonly told version of history. Our powerful nostalgic memories of the State Leagues, them saving the VFL/AFL, and dying in the process.

But the same factors that were seeing the VFL/AFL going broke, were also seeing the State Leagues go broke. ALL the leagues saw crowds peak in the late 70s and all the leagues had crowds going into decline.

The West Coast was as much about saving the WAFL as the VFL/AFL.

Crowds were going down before the national league. Other boring lifestyle changes and entertainment options were eroding the local footy match's hold on the weekend. Something as boring as 15% of homes having a VCR in '83 rising to 70% by '89.

The WAFL home and away crowds

703,677 in 62 (avg 8377)
729,012 in 72 (avg 8679)
687,003 in 82 (avg 8178)
623,245 in 86 (avg 7420)

(781,220 saw the two WA teams H+A this year, plus 179,606 in the WAFL).

 

[mianfei]

The WAFL home and away crowds

703,677 in 62 (avg 8377)
729,012 in 72 (avg 8679)
687,003 in 82 (avg 8178)
623,245 in 86 (avg 7420)

(781,220 saw the two WA teams H+A this year, plus 179,606 in the WAFL).

These figures seem to support my contention that the road lobby, by encouraging development of housing estates out of reach of weekend public transportation, was the cause of the decline in football crowds during the 1980s. The decline began very soon after the dreadful Lonie Report – funded by a BHP and General Motors executive – which has encouraged a consistent focus on freeways to the exclusion of public transport so that more and more families have little capacity to reach the football. It might be asked what the VFL and WAFL would have done if they had recognised this – I don’t think any lobbying by them or clubs could have made a whiff of difference.

On a more practical level, there was a total and irreconcilable conflict between the nature of Australia’s sports and the reality of its culture. Those sports most popular in Australia were by their nature, the most dependent on attendances in the world because they were so difficult to show on television. The wide-angle kicks typical of pre-Docklands Australian Rules could not be captured by cameras anything like so easily as sports like basketball or gridiron, and the narrow-angles of a cricket pitch and ball had similar problems. Yet, the geographic character of Australia with 0.3 percent of the world’s population and 30 percent of its flat land was totally unsuited to mass attendance-based sports. Politics, with the control of the minerals industry, made this problem worse.

As a result, cricket and later football and rugby had to transform themselves much more than sports in the northern and western hemispheres to reach via television those people isolated (in fact, isolated by choice because of the quiet and privacy, in a manner I sometimes analogise to cloistered monks or nuns) from the possibility of attending matches. There have been very definite costs associated with this – for instance a reduction in the population able to play Australian football since television-friendly stadiums like Docklands exclude shorter people from the talent pool, and a competition less fair due to the impossibility of even scheduling with so many clubs – but Australian Rules might have gone the way of the dodo otherwise!

 

[sturtman]

Unfortunately a little Victorian fairy tale spun by Albert to save face. The decline he eludes to was caused in large part by the VFL's open check book policy which peeved off the public in all three footy heartland states.

WA and SA because of the talent drain to the east and the Vics because of the uneven playing field, IE some teams had all the star players while the others had to struggle on by developing the home grown. Easy to fix the half forward line by buying a "Steve Kernahan" or a half back "Robert Klomp" from SA. (I'd mention some notable WA stars here, but not sure of their spelling.) Anyway there were heaps from both states and that found their way onto VFL club lists.

The common belief that the WAFL and SANFL were weaker than the VFL is a Victorian pedaled furphy.

Yes this was driving the VFL broke as the less affluent clubs tried desperately to keep up. The expanded VFL and draft was designed to reign in this reckless and uncontrolled spending as it was destroying the VFL competition from within. State of Origin was the ultimate price paid, because the Vics needed to have the VFL to be seen as the undisputed premier competition in the land and that format, (State of Origin) was debunking that myth and also bank rolling the impudent defiance of the minnow states, in their, (VFL's) desire to attract as many of the best players at the best price as possible.

That's why Adelaide got into the AFL ahead of the Port......giving up the SANFL retention fund, which Port had no control over, and was paramount to achieving that overall aim.

 

[mianfei]

The WAFL and SANFL stuck strong for a lot of the 1980s, with the Croweaters' ultimate aim being to have the VFL back down and have a 12 team national league (max. 6 Victorian clubs), instead of the national league being just an extended VFL (sound familiar?).

Unfortunately, the WAFL couldn't wait and sidled with a Brisbane consortium and the rest they say is history.

The national league would have been so different if the WAFL had waited a couple more years and stuck fat with the SANFL, as the VFL was only a year or two away from having sides fold due to their parlous financial state (and the others that survived would have dropped down to the VFA). The $8million from the Bears and Eagles gave each of the 12 VFL clubs about $650,000 each to fix up their messes ... Fitzroy advised Ross Oakley prior to a VFL meeting that they were going to announce to the clubs that they were going to fold as they were broke and unable to operate any longer. Oakley said to hold on until the end of the meeting as 'you'll have hundreds of thousands of reasons to keep quiet'. Less than an hour later, the Bears and Eagles had solved the financial problems of many of the Victorian clubs.

We have people like Oakley and the WAFL management at the time to thank for drafts, salary caps, uneven draws, etc. instead of having natural progression and the right result occur.

The remaining five or six WAFL clubs, I suppose, would have linked up in a way with the SFL (pinching some of their clubs or else a merger) to change the Perth footy landscape. As we saw later, the Kalgoorlie Miners never went ahead and Bunbury never entered a side so I don't think we ever would have gone down the regional path further than where we are now.

Oakley did not by himself the problem of unfair draws and ground rationalisation.

The roots of this problem can be traced to the VFL’s country zoning which began in 1968. Country zoning had two critical effects:

1. by providing them with highly productive zones, it provided Hawthorn, North Melbourne, Footscray and Fitzroy – whose financial and especially on-field viability was dubious at best before country zoning – with highly productive zones that saved them from mergers or relocations during the inflationary 1970s and early 1980s
   
2. by preventing the more popular clubs (Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Geelong, Richmond) from having free access to country recruits, it forced them to turn more to interstate recruits than they would have with free agency for country players. The result was increased bidding for interstate players and the WA(N)FL and SANFL were less able to keep them.

If the less popular and unviable on-field VFL clubs had merged, relocated, or moved to the VFA, as would have happened minus country zoning, then the Croweaters’ aim of a league with six Victorian clubs would have been very feasible. As of 1967, there were only six VFL clubs who were at all competitive on-field (the “big five” plus St. Kilda), and the Menzies-era immigration programs meant that would not have likely changed without the momentous effects of country zoning.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

A Premier League would have formed.

Too big a TV opportunity for it not to happen.

I would expect a similar experience to England - the clubs admitted would have become massive, yet they'd still be broke - the bargaining war for top players means whatever they earned (plus more) would have gone straight to players.

Football in the lower levels would have been decimated.

 

[mianfei]

A Premier League would have formed.

Too big a TV opportunity for it not to happen.

I would expect a similar experience to England - the clubs admitted would have become massive, yet they'd still be broke - the bargaining war for top players means whatever they earned (plus more) would have gone straight to players.

Football in the lower levels would have been decimated.

A national league might well have formed, and this would have transformed football into a television-based sport in the same way actually happened – Waverley would have had no hope, nor would the suburban grounds where politics prevented and prevents light for profitable TV viewing being installed. Apart from a different composition with fewer Victorian teams and more from Western Australia and South Australia, I cannot predict much difference from what actually happened. I don’t see football as being nearly so analogous to soccer as to basketball. With a tiny talent pool in a television-based game as shorter people are removed therefrom, clubs would have become more nearly profit-maximisers since the price of talent would have become too large for win-maximisation even with complete free agency.

What would have happened to the state leagues is a big question, though, if their best clubs became part of a fully national competition with five or six Victorian clubs. Their support would certainly have been weakened and new blood would have been an impossibility. This would have affected the ability of interstate clubs to succeed and potentially have actually meant for more prestige for Victorian clubs.

 

[Chris who]

ideally IMO would have been a north perth, perth and freo. No links to one club
north would have taken West perth, east perth Subiaco zones
Perth would have taken perth swans and Claremont
Freo would have the south fremantle east fremantle and Peel Area

Basically the northern corrido nd a bit of the east for the north side
Central, east and western suburbs for perth
Freo and southern corridor for the Fremantle side

Nowdays you have the biggest WCE stronghold in the central northern corridor so it would be hard to ever have a 3rd perth team

 

[DAT8]

That is what was proposed in the middle 1980s when both the VFL and WAFL were in terrible financial trouble due to low attendances, largely due to Australia’s inability to update its public transportation to permit people from new suburbs to attend games. It was this (inherent with our rich mineral resources and consequent all-powerful road lobby) political problem that forced the transformation to a television-based game and a national competition.

If the proposed national competition had formed, it is possible that the weaker clubs in the VFL (e.g. St. Kilda, North Melbourne, Footscray, Fitzroy) and the WAFL (Perth, Swan Districts, probably others) would have gone extinct in the 1980s. It would have formed a very different national competition, maybe one without the unfairness of today’s AFL in terms of ground rationalisation and the draw, but potentially in some ways even more removed from the traditions of football for the sake of commercialism.

Swans are one of the most supported clubs in the WAFL, i highly doubt they would have folded

 

[Silent Alarm]

Swans are one of the most supported clubs in the WAFL, i highly doubt they would have folded

Very hard to see a case for a most clubs folding.

East Fremantle – huge success, great talent pool. Souths had a heap of support, West Perth and East Perth well supported, so too Swans. You're just looking at Claremont, Subi, and the Demons as the ones getting turfed.

 

[MortlockWatcher]

The clubs would have all found a home in the national league concept led by John Elliott's group.

As discussed previously, there would have been little difference to the current footy landscape we know.

The VFL clubs (Fitzroy, Footscray, Melbourne, North Melbourne, St Kilda) would have ended up being affiliated with an expanded VFA. (which is now the VFL)

The Sydney Swans would probably have stayed in this league.

Remembering the footy landscape in the early 1980s, I could not see composite sides being created. Any SANFL clubs joining a national league would have been replaced by SAFA or maybe even SAAFL clubs, and any WAFL clubs departing to a national league would have been replaced by Sunday clubs (from the WAFA or South Suburban-Murray FL, which amalgamated to become in the Sunday Football League around 1983).

The SANFL and WAFL scenario above would see virtually the same set-up as we know now, except a couple of the clubs would be different (or they may have even admitted AFL Reserves sides LOL).

 

[The_Reaper]

Oakley did not by himself the problem of unfair draws and ground rationalisation.

The roots of this problem can be traced to the VFL’s country zoning which began in 1968. Country zoning had two critical effects:

1. by providing them with highly productive zones, it provided Hawthorn, North Melbourne, Footscray and Fitzroy – whose financial and especially on-field viability was dubious at best before country zoning – with highly productive zones that saved them from mergers or relocations during the inflationary 1970s and early 1980s
   
2. by preventing the more popular clubs (Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Geelong, Richmond) from having free access to country recruits, it forced them to turn more to interstate recruits than they would have with free agency for country players. The result was increased bidding for interstate players and the WA(N)FL and SANFL were less able to keep them.

If the less popular and unviable on-field VFL clubs had merged, relocated, or moved to the VFA, as would have happened minus country zoning, then the Croweaters’ aim of a league with six Victorian clubs would have been very feasible. As of 1967, there were only six VFL clubs who were at all competitive on-field (the “big five” plus St. Kilda), and the Menzies-era immigration programs meant that would not have likely changed without the momentous effects of country zoning.

At some stage there was talk of the VFL and the VFA merging with pro/rel
Interesting how that would have changed history

 

[MortlockWatcher]

That was around the 1950s. VFA wanted automatic promotion/relegation, but the VFL wanted a playoff instead.

There was an eBay auction a couple of years ago with a booklet about this (about 50-60 pages and must have been something like the minutes of meetings), but I didn't win it unfortunately.

 

[Mr_Bojangles]

Unfortunately a little Victorian fairy tale spun by Albert to save face. The decline he eludes to was caused in large part by the VFL's open check book policy which peeved off the public in all three footy heartland states.

WA and SA because of the talent drain to the east and the Vics because of the uneven playing field, IE some teams had all the star players while the others had to struggle on by developing the home grown. Easy to fix the half forward line by buying a "Steve Kernahan" or a half back "Robert Klomp" from SA. (I'd mention some notable WA stars here, but not sure of their spelling.) Anyway there were heaps from both states and that found their way onto VFL club lists.

The common belief that the WAFL and SANFL were weaker than the VFL is a Victorian pedaled furphy.

Yes this was driving the VFL broke as the less affluent clubs tried desperately to keep up. The expanded VFL and draft was designed to reign in this reckless and uncontrolled spending as it was destroying the VFL competition from within. State of Origin was the ultimate price paid, because the Vics needed to have the VFL to be seen as the undisputed premier competition in the land and that format, (State of Origin) was debunking that myth and also bank rolling the impudent defiance of the minnow states, in their, (VFL's) desire to attract as many of the best players at the best price as possible.

That's why Adelaide got into the AFL ahead of the Port......giving up the SANFL retention fund, which Port had no control over, and was paramount to achieving that overall aim.

I think that's why the State of Origin was such as success when it was because we got those players back.