Grand Final Review

Last Week           0/1          Season Total      141/209

It’s not a Grand Final that I want to review.  So, I won’t.  Not because it wasn’t a pulsating contest, not because of the way those final minutes played out, but because I’m still in shock and I’m desperately unhappy about the state of footy.  It’s not a sport I enjoy much anymore, and the AFL is directly to blame.  There is some fallout from the Grand Final.  WharfieGate is a thing as Fremantle administration insist it was not them that pressed the button.  Could it have sunk the team?  It’s quite possible and someone has to answer for it.  Meanwhile petulant winners of the Grand Final are going around and saying things they shouldn’t.  If you didn’t hate Brisbane already, you probably have a few reasons to now.

Not that any of it is relevant as the entire competition has shifted to Trade discussions and, just 5 days later, no one really gives a shit about the Grand Final anymore.  In fact, the AFL’s flagship “TradeRadio” was launched in the days leading up to the Grand Final, so the AFL itself had already moved on before it even happened.  Kylie was sensational, the Anthem was sung with Gusto, but the AFL had already packed up shop, hosted a few corporates and were worrying about their next chapter.

The reason why it’s broken is varied and complex as regardless of what you do it is nearly impossible to make the game equal for all clubs.  But you’d think the alterations and manipulations by the AFL would at least try to make it more even for all clubs rather than skew the unevenness further in favour of the Northern clubs as the AFL tries to gain and maintain a foothold in the NRL market…at the expense of supporters.  The money we pump in as we go through the gates and the TV rights money that is there because we pay for subscriptions is grossly disproportionately spread about the football landscape.  Academy funding should be looked into as well as the private funding that threatens the AFL when they try to realign their funding model.  Then there’s the way the access to the academies works such that the 3-in-a-row Premiers whose team mostly aren’t even old enough to be playing their best footy yet, get to harvest the academies with a pick before any other team in the top eight this year gets one.  Fremantle on the other hand are the one club least favoured by any of these concessions.  They’ve had to build a team on sweat and perseverance.  If this continues, we’re likely to not see another team win a premiership in my lifetime.  May as well turn the TV off, which isn’t such a bad idea.

I’d like to congratulate Brisbane on a job well done, but it’s a bitter pill to swallow when so much is gifted to them.  A better man might rise above it, but this soon after watching that last week, I just can’t.

I’m not sure I’ll be back to write previews next season.  I’ll take the summer to think about it.  The sport I grew up to love is being ripped away from us and I feel I’m leading the charge of the disenfranchised.  But the world moves on and the young fans of today who the AFL want to capture have short attention spans and even shorter memories.  They’ve grown up in a world where their interest is a commodity to be exploited and that’s just what the AFL is doing and today’s youth are so used to it, they believe this is how its supposed to work.  So, you can have your Wharfie Times, have your Country Roads, because this is where the AFL lives and keeps the viewers attention, while they destroy the fabric of the game when you’re not looking.

Have a great summer everyone.  Put footy on the back-burner if it’s not there already.