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Now we know why caroline only picked us for 3rd !
Unwanted Dogs running out of shelter
By Caroline Wilson
March 30 2003
There is a smell of death about the Western Bulldogs. Terry Wallace had a whiff and walked out. Say what you like about Wallace's modus operandi and what went on behind the scenes with Sydney, but the former Footscray coach has been proved correct in his assertions last season that the club had well and truly changed the goalposts from when he signed his four-year contract at the end of 2000.
Now Peter Rohde is coaching a team that is operating at roughly 95 per cent of the AFL's total player payments. It has to if it wants to keep collecting $1 million a year to stay alive. The truly drastic situation lies ahead, at the end of 2003, when Luke Darcy, Nathan Brown and about 20 other footballers must be retained to keep the club competitive. Particularly when a modest pay rise is granted to all AFL players via the soon-to-be completed new collective bargaining agreement.
The AFL has made it clear to the Bulldogs that striving for a premiership must, for now, sit behind the top-order priority of survival. That is an anathema in Australian football. It did not sit so uncomfortably with chief executive Campbell Rose when he first joined the club last season but Rose is fast becoming accustomed to the culture of the game and now he is starting to truly see the horror of the Bulldogs' situation.
That, coupled with the awful truth next to no one since Lease Plan has shown any interest in joining up as a corporate sponsor. The hospitality sales have been appalling. One significant backer has left to join Collingwood, and the Magpies, feted by the Bulldogs when their president Eddie McGuire had a game named after him, said they were powerless to stop them.
The Magpies even tried to strike a deal with their ball sponsor to add some extra cash and back the Bulldogs' 11 home games as well. No interest.
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If the club had a conservative ambition leading up to today's clash with Geelong, it was to keep its perilous situation out of the public eye. It almost made it. Trying to sell sponsorships while admitting simultaneously you are not the most attractive of products simply does not add up. Even when your playing list is as impressive as the one at Whitten Oval.
What will save the Bulldogs in the short-term is the move by the AFL to extend its special assistance packages for the club. An Age survey last week underlined the fact the clubs would support the drip feed at least until 2006. The commission is even pushing to rename the fund to remove the inference of it being just that - a survival package.
The sad irony of the AFL's determination to retain 16 clubs until the end of the present media agreement will not be lost on Fitzroy supporters, but in the end there is no point berating the present administration. Most of them were not around in the mid-1990s and those who were can claim to have learnt by their mistakes.
Because it would be a mistake to let the Bulldogs die. Most of the powerful clubs - although Port Adelaide was non-commital - were steadfast last week that the damage to the game caused by the Bulldogs' departure would come at a financial cost far heavier than the money put forward to prop up the club.
And make no mistake - the game can afford it. It recorded an $8 million profit last year and has made significant noises in the marketing and development of the game in recent months that the clubs, not the AFL brand, are what it's all about.
Rose behaved with resigned diplomacy when he revealed the club's stark circumstances to The Age five days ago. David Smorgon, normally such an effective spin doctor, was unable to hide his fears. Smorgon seems to be running out of ideas. How many times can he plead with the people of Melbourne's western suburbs to get behind the club financially?
But Rose did become curt when the word "relocation" was offered as a solution. "That has no place in our plans," he said. The word "merger" was not uttered. It didn't have to be.
Unwanted Dogs running out of shelter
By Caroline Wilson
March 30 2003
There is a smell of death about the Western Bulldogs. Terry Wallace had a whiff and walked out. Say what you like about Wallace's modus operandi and what went on behind the scenes with Sydney, but the former Footscray coach has been proved correct in his assertions last season that the club had well and truly changed the goalposts from when he signed his four-year contract at the end of 2000.
Now Peter Rohde is coaching a team that is operating at roughly 95 per cent of the AFL's total player payments. It has to if it wants to keep collecting $1 million a year to stay alive. The truly drastic situation lies ahead, at the end of 2003, when Luke Darcy, Nathan Brown and about 20 other footballers must be retained to keep the club competitive. Particularly when a modest pay rise is granted to all AFL players via the soon-to-be completed new collective bargaining agreement.
The AFL has made it clear to the Bulldogs that striving for a premiership must, for now, sit behind the top-order priority of survival. That is an anathema in Australian football. It did not sit so uncomfortably with chief executive Campbell Rose when he first joined the club last season but Rose is fast becoming accustomed to the culture of the game and now he is starting to truly see the horror of the Bulldogs' situation.
That, coupled with the awful truth next to no one since Lease Plan has shown any interest in joining up as a corporate sponsor. The hospitality sales have been appalling. One significant backer has left to join Collingwood, and the Magpies, feted by the Bulldogs when their president Eddie McGuire had a game named after him, said they were powerless to stop them.
The Magpies even tried to strike a deal with their ball sponsor to add some extra cash and back the Bulldogs' 11 home games as well. No interest.
advertisement
advertisement
If the club had a conservative ambition leading up to today's clash with Geelong, it was to keep its perilous situation out of the public eye. It almost made it. Trying to sell sponsorships while admitting simultaneously you are not the most attractive of products simply does not add up. Even when your playing list is as impressive as the one at Whitten Oval.
What will save the Bulldogs in the short-term is the move by the AFL to extend its special assistance packages for the club. An Age survey last week underlined the fact the clubs would support the drip feed at least until 2006. The commission is even pushing to rename the fund to remove the inference of it being just that - a survival package.
The sad irony of the AFL's determination to retain 16 clubs until the end of the present media agreement will not be lost on Fitzroy supporters, but in the end there is no point berating the present administration. Most of them were not around in the mid-1990s and those who were can claim to have learnt by their mistakes.
Because it would be a mistake to let the Bulldogs die. Most of the powerful clubs - although Port Adelaide was non-commital - were steadfast last week that the damage to the game caused by the Bulldogs' departure would come at a financial cost far heavier than the money put forward to prop up the club.
And make no mistake - the game can afford it. It recorded an $8 million profit last year and has made significant noises in the marketing and development of the game in recent months that the clubs, not the AFL brand, are what it's all about.
Rose behaved with resigned diplomacy when he revealed the club's stark circumstances to The Age five days ago. David Smorgon, normally such an effective spin doctor, was unable to hide his fears. Smorgon seems to be running out of ideas. How many times can he plead with the people of Melbourne's western suburbs to get behind the club financially?
But Rose did become curt when the word "relocation" was offered as a solution. "That has no place in our plans," he said. The word "merger" was not uttered. It didn't have to be.
