Priority Picks Keep The Wheels Of Footy Spinning Too Fast

The Age

Saturday April 23, 2005

TIM LANE

The time might have come for AFL bosses to stop rewarding clubs for failure

IF THE AFL Commission needed a clarion call to herald the time when it can discontinue rewarding clubs for dismal failure, last weekend's round might have been it.

By Sunday night, as measured by the ladder, the Kangaroos were in the top bracket and Collingwood in the bottom, yet on the field, they were separated by three points. The Brisbane Lions, the dominant team of the past four years, had not so much been overtaken by Hawthorn, 15th last year, as left in its dust; the reigning premiers, at home and on the rebound, could not beat a weakened Carlton; and last year's wooden spooner Richmond made it three wins from four games.

Results that go against the run of form happen in any year, but the clear message of the first month of the season is that footy's wheel of fortune is spinning fast. If the game were to be equalised any further, it would begin to feel as though your team's end-of-year placing might be as randomly determined as a numbered marble falling from the lotto basket on Saturday night.

The most frequently cited arguments against priority draft picks are that they "reward mediocrity" (although it's performance worse than mediocre that is actually being rewarded), that they give too great an advantage to poorly performing teams, and that they could actually provide an incentive to such teams to lose in certain circumstances.

Another argument warranting consideration is that the present rules of equalisation create a sense of inevitability about the reasonably regular rise and fall of all clubs. While one hopes all supporters eventually get the chance to revel in some success, it's worth remembering that many of sport's greatest tales are about perennial no-hopers coming good in that one magical year, season, week or day. Each club's relative level of historic success is part of what distinguishes it from the rest of the field, and part of the character of the competition as a whole.

As the AFL Commission ponders the future of its most potent equalising tool, it might consider that there will never be a time quite like the present to dispense with it.

Bearing in mind that Brisbane's star could be on the wane, and that no team in the competition has benefited quite like the Lions from the AFL's intervention over the past 15 years, this could just be the perfect opportunity for Year One of the Post-Modern Game to be declared.

It might be coincidence, but it might also be symbolic that the team that dethroned Brisbane last September was, among the Lions' non-Victorian counterparts, its direct antithesis. The AFL's Port Adelaide was formed from as traditional a base as there is in the land and it climbed the ladder of success without any particular favours. Its achievement is entirely its own and deserves to be celebrated in that light. Perhaps that's as good a starting point as any for the game's future.

Eddie McGuire is right in lamenting that all the off-field success in the world, under the present rules, takes a club almost nowhere towards achieving what the game is really about: winning on the paddock. What would be fascinating to observe, though, is whether it's the kind of material wealth enjoyed by Collingwood, or something less tangible than that, that would produce greater on-field success in a world equalised only by an unfettered draft.

In his relatively new role as players' association boss, Brendon Gale recently made his first visits to Collingwood's new Olympic Park centre and to the home of Shinboner Spirit, Arden Street. In awe of both, for diametrically opposite reasons, Gale observed that the Struggle Street nature of the Kangaroos' home, in his opinion, would be the more advantageous of the two sets of facilities.

What a delightful assessment that is, and how heartening for the game's future. One big challenge for the AFL, in this era of equalisation and homogenisation of its clubs, is to ensure that those clubs retain clear and separate identities. This is particularly so in Melbourne, where it's probably fair to say that only four of the nine have any real connection to, and have their character shaped by, a residential zone.

It's time for the game to scale back on the contrived methods it has employed to ensure the evenness of the competition. The clubs resemble each other enough. Any more and we won't know who to barrack for.