Toast North Melbourne - Proudly Pokie Free

[bresker]

Allow this Bulldog a little intrusion on your board. I know our fans have had our differences over the last few seasons, but I'm not here to talk about football but the business of footy.

I'm a member of the Alliance for Gambling reform . We aim to limit the harm inflicted by poker machines on society & to stop their continued proliferation across the nation.

Football and its reliance on pokies are one of our targets. We've been out & about on match days gaining support from fans at the MCG and signing them up to our petitions. We've received a lot of positive feedback. http://www.pokiesplayyou.org.au/matchstall1.

I want to warmly congratulate the North Melbourne Football Club on being proudly pokie free. It must have been very tempting for the administration to install machines when all the other Victorian clubs were doing it. It was a brave decision to hold firm. Does anyone here know why the club decided not to take the easy money when everyone else was diving in for a slice of the immoral pie?

I'm against the AFL's continued involvement with poker machines for two main reasons:

1.) I'm a poker machine addict myself. I hate the bloody things and what they've done for me. They have no place in a game which prides itself on community and inclusiveness.

2.) Equality. Equalisation. The AFL is always talking about having a fair and equal competition. How can the competition ever be fair when one club, Hawthorn, is raking in $23 million a year from pokies and North Melbourne gets nothing at all? Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon all get over $10 million dollars. Yet these are the 'big' clubs with 'big' supporter bases. Why do they need to fleece the most needy in our society with dangerous, addictive machines?

I think that your club should do more to promote its pokie free status, and if the Alliance for Gambling Reform can help in any way we'd be more than happy to do that.

 

[bresker]

I decided to do something about my own club's involvement with pokies this year & run for the board as a director at the AGM on an anti-pokies ticket. Rather than repeat myself I'll direct you to the thread here -

https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/a-favour-to-ask.1183726/

where you can read the whole saga for yourself.

Can I ask you a favour - do not post on the Bulldogs board on that thread. I don't have a problem with you doing it & would welcome your input, but you know how touchy some posters are about outsiders coming in, especially 'norfies.' I'll get into hot water over it.

The Bulldogs management have stymied my chances of getting my message across by taking most of the relevant anti-pokie message out of the biography I provided - I'm tucked away on page seven with a paltry two paragraphs:

http://s.afl.com.au/staticfile/AFL Tenant/WesternBulldogs/Articles/Matches 2017/230118_AGMNoticeDirectorNominations.pdf

I know I have no chance of getting elected but it would have been decent of the club to publish my full document to members. I'll post the full text below:

"“
My name is Stuart McDonald. I'm originally from Ireland. When I migrated to Melbourne in 1999 I soon realised I needed to choose an Aussie Rules team. I lived first in St Albans and then Sunshine, becoming an adopted Son of the West. I fell in love with the sport and with the Doggies. I became a member and travelled to Docklands to cheer on the boys every week they played in Melbourne. I had a spell back in Ireland but returned to Australia in time for Bev's reign and our glorious finals run. I'm a social club member and I was lucky enough to be at the MCG to watch our Grand Final victory. Through bigfooty.com I've sponsored a number of players over the years.


I'm a primary school teacher. I have three children aged sixteen, two and six months. The two year old is mad about the Doggies and accompanies me to games. I love the footy - but I hate pokies.


The Western Bulldogs operate 63 poker machines across two venues, Club Leeds in Footscray and Club Dromana. Community members lost nearly $6 million on Bulldogs pokies in 2016/17. The Club operates these pokies, despite research which tells us that 40% of this money comes from people with gambling addiction. About 60% comes from people experiencing harm with their gambling.


I'm a pokies addict. So are many others in our community. That's not surprising. Poker machines are deliberately designed to ensnare and addict users. Their sole purpose is to extract money from the user as quickly as possible.

I've lost thousands of dollars to these misleading and addictive machines over the years. Some of this money was lost at venues operated by our club. I consider myself fortunate. Other people have lost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.


The pokie machines operated by the Western Bulldogs are responsible for immense harm within our community. They contribute to family violence, divorce, alcoholism, criminal behaviour and suicide.

New AFL chairman Richard Goyder has declared he hates the pokies and has established “Project Fruit” inside the commission which is aiming to reduce AFL club dependency on pokies revenue. The Bulldogs should be a leading advocate for reform through this process and ultimately join North Melbourne in being proudly pokies free.


This club stands for community. The sons and daughters of the west do not want our club operating these machines. Our club captain Easton Wood has publicly stated he "couldn't stomach" gambling. We have record membership and many revenue streams.Help me kick the pokies out of footy. We don't need them. We don't want them.

Regards and Go Dogs!

Stuart McDonald"

The sections highlighted in bold weren't published by the club on my nomination form.
So I've set up a Facebook page with my full original message on it. Feel free to like and share, especially with any Bulldogs mates.

https://www.facebook.com/WBFCboardnominee/


We are not small clubs or minnow clubs. I have been to Dogs v North games recently and the stadium has been packed with a brilliant atmosphere. Some premier league soccer clubs in England would love such a large crowd. We don't need poker machines to enhance the experience.

Clubs should be working together on this. Geelong are scaling back the pokies. I hear whispers that Richmond want out. St Kilda would join us. The WA clubs get no pokies money. We need to form an alliance to bring down the gambling behemoths and create a fair and equal competition.

Yours in solidarity,

Bresker

 

[King Corey]

This probably isn't an appropriate place to say I wish we had pokies...

I should probably elaborate in respect to your heartfelt posts above.

I don't use or particularly condone pokies machines.

However there is an arms race in terms of pokies revenue helping Victorian AFL clubs thrive.

My club while admirable in its stance is basically trying to operate with one hand tied behind its back. That comes with an onus to allow and do certain strategic things as a club in order to survive. And that is incredibly frustrating.

 

[Daniltchenko You Beauty]

This probably isn't an appropriate place to say I wish we had pokies...

I should probably elaborate in respect to your heartfelt posts above.

I don't use or particularly condone pokies machines.

However there is an arms race in terms of pokies revenue helping Victorian AFL clubs thrive.

My club while admirable in its stance is basically trying to operate with one hand tied behind its back. That comes with an onus to allow and do certain strategic things as a club in order to survive. And that is incredibly frustrating.

We’re surviving just fine without them and we’ll be even better off in the next few years when the AFL forces clubs to reduce their dependency on pokies revenue.

Hawthorn made a $2m profit with $23m in pokies revenue. Clubs like that are absolutely stuffed without them.

We’re on the right side of history here and I’m proud of our stance.

 

[Rockstar6]

• I hope the AFL limits how much revenue clubs can generate or just ban them outright. They have taken the tiny, tiny step of heavily reducing the promotion of betting odds displays at games and that's about it. I'd sit there and cry with laughter if the AFL said you can't claim poker machine revenue to the clubs like Hawthorn who rack in $23,000,000. Just one of the many reason I love this club!

 

[Harvey Manfrenjensenden]

I'm not sure of the time frame but eventually all AFL clubs will be pokie free

There will be a handover period where another "club" (meaning part of clubs Victoria not another football club) take over the management of the venue but still pay a percentage of the profits back to the AFL club, with a purchasing date set 2 - 5 years down the track. This will allow the footy club to set up other revenue streams rather than just wiping them from their books.

 

[ferball]

Good one bresker. And good luck. You're doing a worthy thing.


Also good luck with your addiction. Its not an easy path and the consequences for falling off the wagon can be so much worse for your family with a gambling addiction. I used to play footy with a couple of people with pokie addictions and it was ****ed what happened to them. They are literally an electronic form of smack.

I can't agree with your choice of footy team but again - good luck with it and don't stop trying if you don't get nominated this year. If you keep making a stand eventually other people will come around. And if people with vested interests give you shit about it hang in there and don't let the bastards grind you down.

 

[ferball]

On a totally unrelated note, what is it with the Bulldogs copying everything we do...

 

[bresker]

This probably isn't an appropriate place to say I wish we had pokies...

I should probably elaborate in respect to your heartfelt posts above.

I don't use or particularly condone pokies machines.

However there is an arms race in terms of pokies revenue helping Victorian AFL clubs thrive.

My club while admirable in its stance is basically trying to operate with one hand tied behind its back. That comes with an onus to allow and do certain strategic things as a club in order to survive. And that is incredibly frustrating.

I totally understand that, as the system is deeply unfair and unequal. However, clubs owning poker machines are hypocritical and immoral, and I'm hoping the pendulum is swinging towards a pokie-free future. An equal playing field for all clubs.

The last TV rights deal was for $2508 million dollars. $2508,000,000. That's TV rights alone, never mind all the other revenue streams.

In the 1990s there was much less money in the game. Yet as any North Melbourne fan knows, the product was far superior.

This constant focus on money, on profit and loss, on 'big' and 'little' clubs shits me to tears. For all the gleaming training facilities, assistant to the assistant coaches, brand new stadia and 'match day experiences,' the game is worse than it was 20 years ago. The more money that gets spent the worse it is.

 

[ferball]

Hey bresker I read that thread you linked to on your board.

One thing that might be worth following up on is that some posters on that thread mentioned you need to come up with alternative revenue streams to give the board an option. If they sign another 5 year license this Feb then you could take that as an opportunity to come up with and then provide a five year plan for changing things. Its not necessarily gonna be easy or quick but worthwhile things rarely are. If you don't get elected this time but come back next year with a years work on potential changes that could provide an alternative income then you'll generate alot more momentum than you have now.

You might even be able to channel your urges to gamble into working on that stuff in the meantime.

Anyway good luck next week and even if you don't get elected don't give up. Go harder for next time. A year of grass roots work among Doggie supporters who also support what you're doing could actually achieve your goals.

 

[Marstermind]

I might be wrong, but I think the reason we don't have them isn't that altruistic. That is, we jumped at them, had them (I confess going along to the old "Kanga Kasino" at Arden Street), but couldn't really get them to work for us, tried them at Etihad, that didn't work, so we dumped them and took up the opposite stance.

Having said that, it is a source of great pride to me that my football club "blew up the pokies" and contributes positively to society. Despite not being the biggest or richest or most powerful club, we don't look for easy coin largely from the pockets of people who can't afford to lose money.

I guess a lot of people have read this already but I love this article by Greg Baum in the Age last August. http://www.theage.com.au/afl/nopokies-north-come-up-aces-20170818-gxzdu3.html

 

[bresker]

Hey bresker I read that thread you linked to on your board.

One thing that might be worth following up on is that some posters on that thread mentioned you need to come up with alternative revenue streams to give the board an option. If they sign another 5 year license this Feb then you could take that as an opportunity to come up with and then provide a five year plan for changing things. Its not necessarily gonna be easy or quick but worthwhile things rarely are. If you don't get elected this time but come back next year with a years work on potential changes that could provide an alternative income then you'll generate alot more momentum than you have now.

You might even be able to channel your urges to gamble into working on that stuff in the meantime.

Anyway good luck next week and even if you don't get elected don't give up. Go harder for next time. A year of grass roots work among Doggie supporters who also support what you're doing could actually achieve your goals.

Thank you, those are great points. I've had a pretty hectic last 12 months and haven't been able to put a huge amount of energy into this campaign so there is an amateurish, last-minute style to my nomination which will piss the club off no end. I imagine it looks like a stunt to them, though it isn't.

Next year I can be much more professional about it. I can write to current and potential sponsors, local councils, the AFL etc and have much more of an evidence based approach to change.

 

[naturally north]

Well done and good on ya- beat the beast man!

In your proposal you may need to discuss the permanent removal of the likes of Kennett, am not saying from the face of the earth, but it could gain traction.

The very best of luck to ya mate.

 

[Tas]

I think the club doesn't aggressively use it's pokie-free status due to having had pokies at one stage and letting them go due to a turn of events rather than a decision at the time to be pokie-free. However, the club has been offered a lucrative pokie licence from a wealthy benefactor since then and the club has decided to be not only pokie free, but entirely gambling free after ending arrangements with other gambling entities as well.

I think indirectly we help to eradicate pokies from the entire competition because our refusal to be part of the gambling arms-race has seen the AFL introduce a soft cap on football department spending based on what is a sustainable amount of revenue generation without gambling revenue. This has seen the clubs with substantial gambling revenue be in a position where they can't effectively use that revenue to their advantage without risking losing a significant chunk of it in the form of equalisation.

Had the AFL introduced the football department soft cap a lot sooner, I think there would have seen significant less investment in pokies than there has been.

As much as I would like to see the AFL and all clubs abandon gambling revenue, the entire league also profits greatly from the sale of alcohol at games and there would be those that say if we ban gambling, why wouldn't we also ban alcohol which is as destructive as gambling. If we start to peel the layers of this onion we may end up with a very bare base.

What I would like to see is clubs that are least reliant on gambling revenue to make an ethical stance to look at other forms of non-football revenue and disinvest from gambling revenue over time. I think this can be done in a pro-active manner which will see the natural evolution of investment portfolios away from what are football's primitive investment stragies which were to go into pubs/clubs/alcohol/gambling.

We have seen our club start to invest in things like KangaTech, a sports science investment which has been taken up by some NBA franchises and other elite sporting teams, it is an example of a type of investment that can be developed to produce a significant amount of positive revenue.

I think clubs could build on what are effectively elite fitness and training organisations to expand well beyond elite athletes and provide potentially lucrative services to improve the health and well being of the communities, clubs could benefit greatly from what is a wealth of information and resources they employ which can be utilised and expanded on as a significant investment.

There would be other numerous opportunities to invest in things totally unrelated to football.

Gambling and alcohol have always been easy fixes, because exploiting vices have always been an easy way to make money, i think while clubs were struggling to make ends meet when clubs barely turned over much money, it was easy to get seduced into gambling. I think with the wealth in the AFL now it is the time to push politically for the AFL to strive for a higher standard, a more ethical one because it has the means now to do more, to achieve what before was almost impossible to imagine.

I think our club doesn't use our path to shame other clubs because we hope they will see what is possible and be inspired to want to do better themselves, because if we can do it with our resources, why can't everyone else? I think once you start shaming others, they will become defensive and they will resist change.

 

[Heaps of fun]

Such a joke that the Dogs have been trying to sell themselves as a "progressive" club while fleecing some of the poorest people in Melbourne with a pokies club behind Barkly Street.

 

[Dodecahedron]

Not only are the Bulldogs heavily into pokies, they abandoned a massive gaming venue they were building in Maribyrnong after there was an issue with the building contractor. 4 years after construction halted, the building still lies there, concrete and steel, half-finished, wood framework slowly decaying; right in the middle of an up-and-coming suburb called Edgewater near the river.

No one at the Maribyrnong City Council wants to do anything about it. The Bulldogs were absolutely dismissive and useless when I called them to clarify. They just walked away from this project and left this monstrous piece of crap in my neighbourhood. I reckon it would cost a million to pull it down so it will probably rot for another ten years.

This ain’t no suburban pub thing. This is a triple storey venue over an entire block, with underground parking and two levels of hotel and gaming area. At least another venue with pokies didn’t materialise down the end of my street.

Bulldogs - this is as weak as p15s. Just grow a set and clean up your mess FFS.

 

[ferball]

Not only are the Bulldogs heavily into pokies, they abandoned a massive gaming venue they were building in Maribyrnong after there was an issue with the building contractor. 4 years after construction halted, the building still lies there, concrete and steel, half-finished, wood framework slowly decaying; right in the middle of an up-and-coming suburb called Edgewater near the river.

No one at the Maribyrnong City Council wants to do anything about it. The Bulldogs were absolutely dismissive and useless when I called them to clarify. They just walked away from this project and left this monstrous piece of crap in my neighbourhood. I reckon it would cost a million to pull it down so it will probably rot for another ten years.

This ain’t no suburban pub thing. This is a triple storey venue over an entire block, with underground parking and two levels of hotel and gaming area. At least another venue with pokies didn’t materialise down the end of my street.

Bulldogs - this is as weak as p15s. Just grow a set and clean up your mess FFS.

Is that near the old gunpowder magazine just up the river a bit on the opposite side to Flemington?

 

[bresker]

Not only are the Bulldogs heavily into pokies, they abandoned a massive gaming venue they were building in Maribyrnong after there was an issue with the building contractor. 4 years after construction halted, the building still lies there, concrete and steel, half-finished, wood framework slowly decaying; right in the middle of an up-and-coming suburb called Edgewater near the river.

No one at the Maribyrnong City Council wants to do anything about it. The Bulldogs were absolutely dismissive and useless when I called them to clarify. They just walked away from this project and left this monstrous piece of crap in my neighbourhood. I reckon it would cost a million to pull it down so it will probably rot for another ten years.

This ain’t no suburban pub thing. This is a triple storey venue over an entire block, with underground parking and two levels of hotel and gaming area. At least another venue with pokies didn’t materialise down the end of my street.

Bulldogs - this is as weak as p15s. Just grow a set and clean up your mess FFS.

Us Bulldogs supporters have been treated like mushrooms over the Edgewater development - fed shit and then kept in the dark. We've never been told what the hell actually happened with this debacle.

One minute the Edgewater development and its lovely new pokie machines were going to be the bright new future of the club. Next minute, the whole thing is off and we've never been told why.

I wonder if Maribyrnong council put pressure on the club and told them they didn't want any more gambling venues. Or the developer went bust, or the club decided it wasn't going to be profitable.....who knows, because no-one has ever told us.

The new Bulldogs CEO, Ameet Bains, tried to disssuade me from running as a director and highlighted the loss of the pokie licenses from Edgewater as proof that the club was doing something about the issue. I fear he's being a bit cheeky on that one, it sounds like the club were all on for more pokies but it fell through.

Dodecahedron I'll raise your issue with the club management at the AGM next week if they speak to me

 

[Firestarter]

Not only are the Bulldogs heavily into pokies, they abandoned a massive gaming venue they were building in Maribyrnong after there was an issue with the building contractor. 4 years after construction halted, the building still lies there, concrete and steel, half-finished, wood framework slowly decaying; right in the middle of an up-and-coming suburb called Edgewater near the river.

No one at the Maribyrnong City Council wants to do anything about it. The Bulldogs were absolutely dismissive and useless when I called them to clarify. They just walked away from this project and left this monstrous piece of crap in my neighbourhood. I reckon it would cost a million to pull it down so it will probably rot for another ten years.

This ain’t no suburban pub thing. This is a triple storey venue over an entire block, with underground parking and two levels of hotel and gaming area. At least another venue with pokies didn’t materialise down the end of my street.

Bulldogs - this is as weak as p15s. Just grow a set and clean up your mess FFS.

If they were capable of that North Ballarat would still have a VFL team.

 

[gokangas]

We had them twice and stuffed it up twice. Have to be the only club who could not make money out of pokies. Now we don't have any then we may as well make some mileage out of being pokies free but its not totally a moral decision. I am happy to be pokies free in that I have seen the damage they can cause and would quite happily kick them out of the State, but that ain't gonna happen obviously.

 

[bresker]

I might be wrong, but I think the reason we don't have them isn't that altruistic. That is, we jumped at them, had them (I confess going along to the old "Kanga Kasino" at Arden Street), but couldn't really get them to work for us, tried them at Etihad, that didn't work, so we dumped them and took up the opposite stance.

It was a great day for me when they removed the poker machines from Etihad. The Livewire area on level two used to be full of them. It was really hard for me to go to the footy and have a few drinks, and stay away from the bloody things during the halftime break. I remember getting a bit pissed at a game one Friday night and putting my whole week's wage through the machine. I didn't have a red cent left in the bank. I had to ring my (now ex-) wife and tell her shame facedly what had happened. That was a hard phone call.

I went back to Ireland for a couple of years. When I returned and went to my first game at Etihad and saw all the pokie machines were gone it was an amazing relief. It's made a big difference to my enjoyment of live football.

I didn't know the machines were operated by specific clubs, I thought they were just part of Etihad. So thank you to North Melbourne for getting rid of yours. It's been a big deal for this pokies addict.

 

[Groucho]

More power to you bresker,particularly given the personal problems you've had with them. I had a cousin,now deceased, who turned to the pokies after a personal tragedy when she lost a son to suicide. She lost the house,her and her husband's super and ran up extraordinary credit card debts. She went from a comfortable suburban lifestyle to pretty much poverty and,unfortunately, this is not an uncommon story.
Marstermind is correct in that us getting rid of them was not altogether altruistic as we just couldn't make them work but Tas is also correct in that we could have got back into them with what was,apparently,a "sure fire plan" but we knocked it back for the right reasons. I think this last decision gives us at least a modicum of "high moral ground".

 

[Harris 10]

My biggest problem about us not having pokies is we don’t get enough commercial support or recognition because of it.


Off topic a little bit but Labor’s decision to campaign on the removal of pokies will be very interesting.

 

[ferball]

I left Melbourne in the early 90s before pokies. If there was one thing I noticed it was that every time I came back to visit there were less good music venues and more pokies making annoying stupid noises in pubs.

 

[Dodecahedron]

Is that near the old gunpowder magazine just up the river a bit on the opposite side to Flemington?

Yep mate.
If you have $millions spare, it actually has the potential to be converted into apartments.