Opinion Is the AFL becoming an uneven competition?

Is the AFL becoming an uneven competition?


  • Total voters
    34

BucketsandBanger

Team Captain
Aug 1, 2013
407
1,912
Melbourne
AFL Club
St Kilda
What Kennett keeps intimating is that the small clubs are spending above their means in order to be competitive with the big clubs on the field. Which is probably true in a way. He’s simply trying to push the small clubs down to get an even greater competitive advantage. He wont be happy until the AFL is the EPL, 4 to 6 big clubs that can win it and everyone else making up the numbers. This is a man that wanted to drop Alistair Clarkson to the VFL as well at one point. How he got the presidency again is beyond me.
 
What Kennett keeps intimating is that the small clubs are spending above their means in order to be competitive with the big clubs on the field. Which is probably true in a way. He’s simply trying to push the small clubs down to get an even greater competitive advantage. He wont be happy until the AFL is the EPL, 4 to 6 big clubs that can win it and everyone else making up the numbers. This is a man that wanted to drop Alistair Clarkson to the VFL as well at one point. How he got the presidency again is beyond me.


Because he's literally a bully. They use him as s sledge hammer to get what they want. He can make life hard for the AFL until they bend over.
 
Because he's literally a bully. They use him as s sledge hammer to get what they want. He can make life hard for the AFL until they bend over.
Its interesting because all the wording coming out of our club prior to this statement being made was this:
1st up: we need donations to survive and then prosper.
2nd: we will not be impacted as much as the bigger clubs because we were running on a much smaller revenue and cost base.

Both these statement mix pessism with optimism. We say how its tough for us now but we see optimism and opportunity into the future.

Then the murmurings from Gordon and Kennett occurred. Gordon was a strong statement. Kennets was soft.

Then we had Jerry Ryan really get on the front foot for us. It was an excellent article and tbh his view was absolutely spot on and one the AFL and other clubs should be employing. He said st kilda will live within its means and then went onto say that the clubs shouldn't be turning on each other they should be working together against the rival sports. He was spot on. Theres no need to be dismantling of canabalising support as it only benefits other leagues.

The response to this was the statement from kennet.

Make no mistake about it there is now a push from the larger Melbourne based clubs to cull the number of teams in Melbourne. This will only heat up as we get closer to that foxtel deal expiring if a new one is not struck.

Kennett gave it a 3 year time frame which puts it inline with the foxtel deal.
 
Its interesting because all the wording coming out of our club prior to this statement being made was this:
1st up: we need donations to survive and then prosper.
2nd: we will not be impacted as much as the bigger clubs because we were running on a much smaller revenue and cost base.

Both these statement mix pessism with optimism. We say how its tough for us now but we see optimism and opportunity into the future.

Then the murmurings from Gordon and Kennett occurred. Gordon was a strong statement. Kennets was soft.

Then we had Jerry Ryan really get on the front foot for us. It was an excellent article and tbh his view was absolutely spot on and one the AFL and other clubs should be employing. He said st kilda will live within its means and then went onto say that the clubs shouldn't be turning on each other they should be working together against the rival sports. He was spot on. Theres no need to be dismantling of canabalising support as it only benefits other leagues.

The response to this was the statement from kennet.

Make no mistake about it there is now a push from the larger Melbourne based clubs to cull the number of teams in Melbourne. This will only heat up as we get closer to that foxtel deal expiring if a new one is not struck.

Kennett gave it a 3 year time frame which puts it inline with the foxtel deal.


Hopefully a streaming service buys up sports casts and makes the deal even bigger. TV revenue is still the cash cow that makes us prosper. Without that the AFL is unsustainable as it is.
 
Caro on FC just said Saints have some big financial announcements from rich supporters to

a) continue the capital works
b) aiming at two high profile recruits at year end.

Make of that what you will.
Yep. Repeated what she said on 3aw last week.
Also that Bassett was filthy at Peter Gordon’s comments and that Gil got a few phone calls from us and some other clubs.

Good on Caro for mentioning some people thought that Gordon had been hit by the karma bus too after the game 🤣

It also appears that if we did offer Bevo the coaching job ( although denied by the club) we inadvertently caused the Dogs to sign him prematurely to a long contract, putting themselves under serious soft-cap pressure. Not unhappy about that either.

couple of good posts in the context of this thread

sounds like Gordon has tried to throw the smaller clubs, including us, publicly under the bus and there's some push back happening
 

Desperate saint

Senior List
Mar 3, 2016
259
657
AFL Club
St Kilda
yes and no. Like Richmond, we have a lot of dormant members. If we hadn’t spent the last 10 years being sh*t we would be fine. 10 years without finals is a disaster for momentum and membership but somehow we survive. If we actually turn it around we easily jump over clubs like the Dogs, Dees and North. We will never be a top 4 Membership club but with a bit of momentum we could get close to the Hawks and Cats.
and we didnt take advantage of some great years 2003 to 2012-when we were a strong club with Marquee players -the move to Seaford over a few poker machines was close to jumping off a very high building
 
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