The Panel of Terrible and/or Controversial People Who Should Run the AFL
…because they might do a better job than the actual AFL administration.
As the title states, all the people I’ve selected for this panel are controversial for one reason or another. But as for the actual administration – well, I would say the actual administration is turning corruption and incompetence into an art, but that would be giving the current league bosses more credit than they deserve. I’ll explain each panel selection, so there’s no need for a long introduction.
Wayne Carey: His takes on the game are remarkably sensible. Well, usually. There were those times that he said Buddy Franklin and Jack Riewoldt should finish their careers on a wing, but no one’s right all the time. Besides, those opinions wouldn’t affect his administrative decisions, would they?
He’s opposed to the ridiculous suspensions the tribunal hands out for football acts and freak accidents, so he can be counted on not to water the game down beyond recognition. He understands that if the league tries to make a contact sport perfectly safe, they’ll end up ruining it. He thinks all players who play a game during the season for the premiership club should get medals. He’s expressed concern about the league’s inadequate support of grassroots footy. And there is no way in the world that Carey would ever have hired Laura Kane.
Dane Swan: The panel needs someone who cares about the independent VFL clubs. The AFL barely acknowledges the history of the VFA, can’t be bothered to let the VFL have a fixture where every team plays every other team, experiments on the VFL and VFLW as if they weren’t serious leagues, and generally doesn’t care about any of the state leagues except insofar as they serve the purposes of the AFL competition. And, of course, it just let the Preston Football Club die over a $270,000 debt. Sure is a shame there isn’t a nonprofit organisation that serves as the custodian of the game and spends quite a bit more than that on Grand Final entertainment every year… an organisation along those lines could have helped out a club that dates back to 1882, but apparently no such thing exists.
Anyway, Dane’s father, Bill Swan, played a total of 302 games for Port Melbourne and Williamstown – clubs which, like Preston, are older than Collingwood – making him second only to Ben Jolley for VFA/VFL games played. When Dane Swan said in his Hall of Fame speech that he hoped his father would someday join him in the Hall of Fame, I figured that likely meant he cares about the old VFA clubs. So I added him to this panel.
Swan also displayed good sense by saying that the person who reported the Giants’ players for their Mad Monday skits after watching CCTV footage ought to be jailed. What’s more, a friend of mine notes that his plan for transparent toasters could revolutionise toast-making at footy clubs. For that matter, there was that incident a bit over a decade ago where Gold Coast’s protein shake machine got infested by maggots – if the machine had been transparent, they might have noticed the infestation a lot sooner.
Sam Newman: He’s an old-school footballer with generally sound takes on the game, who’s also concerned about what the AFL’s pursuit of safety above all will do to the sport. And he’s already doing a podcast with Carey, so why not add him to the panel too? He may also care about the independent VFL clubs; at any rate, he was friends with Port Melbourne great Fred Cook. In fact, as Paul Amy recounts in the biography Fabulous Fred, Newman saved Cook’s life by intervening when Cook was being beaten up by armed men who’d been sent after him because of incorrect suspicions that Cook was a police informant.
Kane Cornes: I usually like Kane Cornes’ takes, so he’s a natural addition. He’s another who’s concerned about the AFL watering the game down. There’s even a chance he cares about the AFLW. He has at least commented on various AFLW topics sometimes, and his oldest son likes it. Of course, if no one on the panel does care about the AFLW, it’s not like anything will really change. Cornes will take a hard line on drug use, and, frankly, it would be funny to watch him arguing with Carey and Swan about the ideal drug policy. The AFL could bring in a bit of money by televising the arguments – they should be at least as entertaining as the current set of TV shows, and possibly more. Since Eddie McGuire will also be on this panel, someone will need to stand up to him about the prison bar jumper, and hopefully Cornes will be able to do that.
Eddie McGuire: He’s certainly not perfect, considering his behaviour in the prison bar controversy (please reread the title of this article). But the friend who noted the excellence of the transparent toaster idea also reminded me that the panel needs someone who has a clue about how to run the league financially. And McGuire certainly understands finances. He does also seem to know the history of the game and used to be a caller for the VFA as well. He’s pointed out that the current drug policy of punishing only players who get caught leaves players vulnerable to blackmail, so he might have some sensible reform ideas there too.
So if nothing else, the appointment of this committee would lead to some pretty entertaining arguments among the panellists. Considering that the current administration isn’t even entertaining, that’s already an improvement. Perhaps at some point someone could even tell Dane Swan that there are small ovens that can be placed on the countertop and used to toast bread – and which have glass doors, making them functionally equivalent to a transparent toaster that can also be used to heat other foods as well.
As for the actual running of the league… it’s hard to see how things could get much worse, unless the league were taken over by extraterrestrials who abducted Zak Butters. That would definitely make things worse, but fortunately I’m pretty sure it’s not something my proposed panellists would do. So I say we give this panel a shot!
After all, could it be any worse than what we already have?
