TBH I don't think News Ltd owning the Storm would be a big issue in Melbourne. The main point is that Melburnians just don't give a stuff about rugby league. Those that are wise can see it is nothing but a franchise which could be wound up tomorrow. There is no history of the sport in Victoria by any competitive means and the scant regard the NRL treats its southern outpost apropos to televised media coverage fully supports this. Junior development is non-existent and this is emphisised by the NRL strategy plan which soley focuses on concentrating on the regions where rugby league is the primary code. Even a top NRL administrator has personally conceeded to me that they have to let the Nine Network dictate terms when it comes to television coverage in non-traditional rugby league areas so they can get extra dollars. Juxtapose this with their main competitor the AFL and they get prime-time in NSW yet can still get what they want both fiscally and in breadth of coverage.

Forget players, make football cheaper
By Patrick Smith
August 4, 2006

LET us deal with the excuses first. Get the nonsense out of the way.
One, AFL footballers are wealthy young men with time on their hands. Two, the pressure to perform is great and sometimes suffocating. Three, the public likes nothing better than baiting a footballer. Four, they are not role models, just footballers.

We dismiss all that as bunkum.

There are lots of 25-year-old men and women, working in jobs that draw intense responsibility and scrutiny, who don't go around belting other people outside pubs. Who don't go driving drunk, who don't go fleeing from police, who don't carry weapons, who don't assault supporters never mind police, don't go speeding, don't drive without a licence.

All of those breaches of the law were detailed in The Australian last week. All of them the work of AFL footballers.

Then along came Chris Tarrant and Ben Johnson as if on cue. Footballers behaving badly? Cop this. AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou and AFL Players Association boss Brendon Gale have said player behaviour is a concern. And both have said it is no better or worse than it has been over the years. We think they are wrong.

Tables run in all papers this week show footballers have been persistently drawing headlines not for miskicks but misdemeanours. More than in 2005 and more than in 2004.

This same group of players will enjoy a split of nearly $800 million over the next five years.

Pay has gone up, marketing and promotional money has gone up, prizemoney has gone up, retirement funding has gone up, and welfare spending. Everything has gone up except the expectation of the AFL that its footballers behave themselves.

The league and the players' association bore us with details of all the education programs available to footballers.

From draft camp to club, players are warned about drugs and alcohol. They are counselled on their lifestyle, on fame and fortune. They are warned of the increased expectation that falls on a sportsman's shoulders.
For this they are rewarded handsomely. The average income for a footballer is about $200,000.

In truth, they are indulged. Spoilt brats.

For example: the AFL introduced an illicit drug code that protects the players unnecessarily and lends the league to easy criticism that it is soft on drugs.

In the next five years, the AFL will set aside $35 million for the players' retirement fund. And $25 million will be set aside to continue to fund players' education. That is $5 million a year. As one listener on Melbourne talkback radio said, that's enough to fund 100 teachers at $50,000 per annum. That's a lot of education. For that sort of money you are entitled to think one of the players might come up with a cure for cancer.
Given that Gale and Demetriou maintain player behaviour gets neither better nor worse, the education programs in the past seem to be a waste of money.

The more money clubs, the AFL and the players' association direct at educating the players, the more behaviour deteriorates.

If the average earn available to players is $200,000, they should fund their own education. Set up their own self-help groups. If it is their money at work, they might actually listen. Take something on board. Everybody has lined up for a slice of the $780 million broadcast money. The players. The clubs want $2 million a year.

The AFL administration has - correctly - been rewarded for the successful manner in which it has run football. Money will be poured into the game's development up north, especially South-East Queensland, where the AFL is locked in battle with rugby league.

Any suggestion that some of the $780 million might go to relieving the burden on spectators who must pay for admission, membership, reserved seats, parking and outrageously priced food is laughed at by the AFL.
Well, rather than spend $25 million on players to explain the bleeding obvious to them - don't stay out in nightclubs to 4am - the money should be directed towards lowering the cost of football.

Membership should be cheaper, seats cheaper, admission cheaper, merchandise cheaper. And you definitely should be able to buy two dim sims and get some change out of $50.

The public should be rewarded for their loyalty to the game. Their enthusiasm to follow the sport at venues and on television. It might be the players who put on the show but it is the fans who pay to watch it. They are the reason broadcasters shell out $780 million.

The majority of footballers do the right thing by their clubs and their supporters. But all codes must now fight for a share of a marketplace that has become much more competitive and tight with the success of the Socceroos.

And there are enough footballers behaving badly to damage the AFL brand.

Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse selected both Johnson and Tarrant for the match against Adelaide. That is his policy. Maybe that is why Sunday morning's incident was not the first in which these players have been involved.

Some players never learn. Not even if you throw $25 million at them.