66MunsterT
Team Captain
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2001
- Posts
- 333
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- Location
- End of the Far Q
- Other Teams
- North Melbourne
No winners when weak get weaker
By CHARLES HAPPELL
IN this nameless sporting competition, there exist several weak teams and a few fortunate ones that are strong.
Things are skewed in favor of the strong so that, as each year goes by, they actually put on more muscle and condition, while the weaklings fade away to little more than skin and bone. Much the same can be said of their respective bank balances.
The strong get to play each other twice each season in games known as blockbusters, and they get to keep the piles of cash that build up from these biannual extravaganzas. The weak, meanwhile, make do by playing among each other, and sometimes feel happy just to break even.
In this competition, players only a year or two out of school receive a pay packet they'd do well to jump over. Their more senior teammates would need a pole-vault.
Next season, all these players will receive a pay rise of about seven per cent, and possibly more, when the league commission, the body that governs this competition, increases the salary cap. Yet the weakest-performed clubs cannot retain control over their budget by paying their players what they deserve - i.e., not much.
Instead, they are required to spend at least 95percent of their salary cap, never mind that some of their players are so lamentable they deserve not a pay rise but a payout.
As part of a collective bargaining agreement, the powerhouse clubs get to spend roughly the same amount on their playing list as the weaklings.
This means, for example, a team that has lost only three times in its past 38 starts, and is bursting with champions, has a similar wages bill to the sickly, anaemic outfit that has not won at all in 13matches this season.
Occasionally, the weakies - run by lean and hungry administrations, because that's all they can afford - come up with innovative ideas, such as playing their games on Friday nights or moving some of their home games interstate.
The ideas work so well that soon enough the bigger clubs say, ``Hang on, we want a piece of this action''. And, in time, the stripling's hold on this niche in the marketplace is eroded away to almost nothing.
The competition minnows often squawk about this uneven playing field. The rulers of the powerful clubs, with understandable self-interest, remain mute.
One of the grand poobahs this week suggested a financial solution to the weaker clubs that was straight out of Darwin's manual.
``Maybe some of these small clubs might have to pay 95percent of the salary cap like we did for the first three years,'' he said.
``And maybe instead of having five assistant coaches, they have three.''
So you guys trim your coaching staff to three; we'll stick to our five. That sounds fair.
What the proponents of the ``live and let die'' creed should remember is that they have been lucky enough to inherit massive support bases, an advantage built by generations of on-field success.
This competition we speak of is, of course, the AFL. It is a competition that is becoming so rife with inequity that the differences between the haves and have-nots get ever wider. The strong become Charles Atlas, the weakies get more sand kicked in their face.
As the 16 clubs begin their scramble for a share of the AFL's goldmine, generated by the sale of television rights, the time now is ripe to correct a few of these inequities.
Survival of the fittest might hold true in the jungle, but this, after all, is a sporting competition. How does the league benefit by having one or two of its members go to the wall? Everyone is diminished then.
They are the weakest link now. But goodbye? Not just yet.
Charles Happell
By CHARLES HAPPELL
IN this nameless sporting competition, there exist several weak teams and a few fortunate ones that are strong.
Things are skewed in favor of the strong so that, as each year goes by, they actually put on more muscle and condition, while the weaklings fade away to little more than skin and bone. Much the same can be said of their respective bank balances.
The strong get to play each other twice each season in games known as blockbusters, and they get to keep the piles of cash that build up from these biannual extravaganzas. The weak, meanwhile, make do by playing among each other, and sometimes feel happy just to break even.
In this competition, players only a year or two out of school receive a pay packet they'd do well to jump over. Their more senior teammates would need a pole-vault.
Next season, all these players will receive a pay rise of about seven per cent, and possibly more, when the league commission, the body that governs this competition, increases the salary cap. Yet the weakest-performed clubs cannot retain control over their budget by paying their players what they deserve - i.e., not much.
Instead, they are required to spend at least 95percent of their salary cap, never mind that some of their players are so lamentable they deserve not a pay rise but a payout.
As part of a collective bargaining agreement, the powerhouse clubs get to spend roughly the same amount on their playing list as the weaklings.
This means, for example, a team that has lost only three times in its past 38 starts, and is bursting with champions, has a similar wages bill to the sickly, anaemic outfit that has not won at all in 13matches this season.
Occasionally, the weakies - run by lean and hungry administrations, because that's all they can afford - come up with innovative ideas, such as playing their games on Friday nights or moving some of their home games interstate.
The ideas work so well that soon enough the bigger clubs say, ``Hang on, we want a piece of this action''. And, in time, the stripling's hold on this niche in the marketplace is eroded away to almost nothing.
The competition minnows often squawk about this uneven playing field. The rulers of the powerful clubs, with understandable self-interest, remain mute.
One of the grand poobahs this week suggested a financial solution to the weaker clubs that was straight out of Darwin's manual.
``Maybe some of these small clubs might have to pay 95percent of the salary cap like we did for the first three years,'' he said.
``And maybe instead of having five assistant coaches, they have three.''
So you guys trim your coaching staff to three; we'll stick to our five. That sounds fair.
What the proponents of the ``live and let die'' creed should remember is that they have been lucky enough to inherit massive support bases, an advantage built by generations of on-field success.
This competition we speak of is, of course, the AFL. It is a competition that is becoming so rife with inequity that the differences between the haves and have-nots get ever wider. The strong become Charles Atlas, the weakies get more sand kicked in their face.
As the 16 clubs begin their scramble for a share of the AFL's goldmine, generated by the sale of television rights, the time now is ripe to correct a few of these inequities.
Survival of the fittest might hold true in the jungle, but this, after all, is a sporting competition. How does the league benefit by having one or two of its members go to the wall? Everyone is diminished then.
They are the weakest link now. But goodbye? Not just yet.
Charles Happell
