Big Money & Sport: It Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be!
Talking heads in the AFL media like to tell us that all the players are in it to win a premiership. This may have been so back in the day, when these commentators were playing themselves, but it aint so black and white these days. Big money is on offer for lots of AFL players and this is now the number one driver in the game. Two million dollars a season is a juicy carrot for those at the very top and many will park their premiership aspirations in favour of taking the dough firstly. I point to all those Gold Coast Sun’s players who left to pursue their careers at other clubs despite winning a final last year and having a 3 time premiership coach, Damien Hardwick at the helm. The allure of more money and a Melbourne based AFL club gazumped the premiership motivation. Big money and sport: It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!
The Big Money Driving AFL
The commercialisation of AFL is in overdrive, as sports betting papers every surface in the game. Take a look at the fortunes of premiership coaching gurus Alastair Clarkson and Damien Hardwick. These super coaches are on big ticket multi-million dollar contracts and how are their new clubs faring? Not too bloody good! The market tells us that these AFL coaches are rated at the very top of the tree on the back of their repeated conquests of the Everest of AFL coaching – multiple premierships. Rewarded with big money contracts to take perennial underachievers to the promised land things are not looking too good right now. You have to ask yourself is the hunger still in the belly of these blokes or has the good life dampened their desire to go through what it takes to reach the heights demanded by club presidents and supporters at North Melbourne and Gold Coast? The market overcompensating sportspeople is no guarantee of success. I mean, look at LIV Golf and Cameron Smith – the rich rewards have snuffed out his motivation by the look of things. Indeed, few to none LIV golfers have improved or even held their own since taking the big money.
Sport Is Not Really About The Big Money
Markets reward achievements with generous renumeration but sport is not really about money. Sport, at its core, is about glory and overcoming adversity. In the case of team sports, it is also very much about the camaraderie and that necessary teamwork, which makes tough victories possible. A champion team will always beat a team of champions. The media and the market emphasise individual achievements. The AFL media bangs on about the stars of the game. The commercialisation of sport wants poster boys and girls to hang their product endorsements upon. Colgate, Uber Eats, insurance companies and the rest of them want star player associations to sway your consumer choices. Little kids love their sporting heroes and in many ways the tribal AFL or NRL fan indulges their childlike responses to the game. Business exploits that love of the game.
Boorish Fox Footy Commentators
If you watch an AFL match on Fox Footy, the expert commentators never shut the fuck up. Maybe, they are like lawyers and are paid by the word. Mansplaining is big in the world of AFL punditry. Hands up who else is sick of being loudly lectured to during a game, when you just want to watch the bloody footy? AFL commentators back in the day of Dennis Cometti did not boorishly bang on about their pet theories, rather they called the game with style and humour. Shut the fuck up! Too much money in the sport has poisoned this part of the game as well. I could name names but you all know who they are. Raising the volume of your voice is not what this caper is really about. It is not a question of going hard, but rather a skilled operator boasts a light touch based on intelligence. We miss Dennis Cometti! Big money and sport: It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!
Lean & Mean Produces Results
AFL players athletically work bloody hard to get where they are, there is no doubt about that. Yes, they deserve to be well renumerated for their efforts. Have you noticed how often AFL players, right after signing contract extensions, play poorly? Lean and mean is better for performances than secure and comfortable. It is the same for coaches. Example? Fremantle Docker’s coach Justin Longmuir is on an annual rolling contract, no extra fat on that deal. The American style overtaking of sports by big money and sports betting gambling behemoths is another thing entirely. The sacrifice everything mentality for a premiership is fast becoming a myth, overtaken by million dollar contracts. Big money and sport: It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be! Dumb AFL shows on TV bang on about player contracts, as much or more than they do about covering actual games. Greed is not good for the game. Too much money is no good for performance, as it equates with hibernation in the wild. You want hungry players and coaches, not those rolling in clover.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdsEoGQMEtk $Millions Spent To Languish In Abject Mediocrity
If you look at the 18 clubs in the AFL competition, how many of them are performing to supporter expectation? Just a handful, if that, the vast majority are an absolute disgrace by any measurement. Has big money made the competition better? No. The whole thing is a gravy train for the elites with their snouts in the trough. It is a bunch of fat cats stuffing themselves with the hard earned of the fans. Overpaid players and coaches. Billion dollar broadcast deals. Sponsorship money and corporatised facilities. Sports betting ruling the roost over the entire business. If things are so bloody good, why are most teams performing below expectation for years. Members keep paying their yearly membership subscriptions in the hope that things will improve. You have clubs down the bottom of the ladder paying their players and coaches/staff some $27 million. Millions to languish in abject mediocrity.
“THE AFL has today confirmed the AFL and AFLW Soft Cap Policy for the three-year period covering 2025-2027.”
- (https://www.afl.com.au/news/1222813/2025-27-football-department-soft-cap) Biggest Loser? Look In The Mirror.
We are the biggest losers, the passionate fans who bleed for our losing clubs. Whilst those running the show live the good life at our expense. Big money and sport: It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!
Indigenous AFL Players
“You may or may not have noticed a dearth of Indigenous footy players running around in the current crop of AFL players. Indeed, you may be aware of the absence of star players like Bobby Hill from Collingwood and Tyson Stengle from the Cats. Then, there is the long running Jamarra Ugle-Hagan saga, which stretched from the Western Bulldogs to the Gold Coast Suns. What do these three things have in common? They all involve Aboriginal AFL players who were or are on lucrative long term contracts with their clubs not playing or training as required. The Aboriginal footballer problem in the AFL.”
- (https://www.golfdom.com.au/the-aboriginal-footballer-problem-in-the-afl/)
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of The Stoic Golfer; The AI Heresy; What Price Life?; America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump; and other titles. NOW AVAILABLE AT APPLE BOOKS & GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS. Google Play Books AUDIOBOOK
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