The arguments advanced against the introduction of a Northern Territory team into the AFL in the near future sound very much like the arguments against a Tasmanian team reheated. Well, in Darwin, they would be hotter.
But they don’t hold any more water now than they did then. Twenty teams is too many? Let’s put that in historical context. A century ago, when the VFL expanded from nine teams to 12, Victoria’s population was 1.7 million, an average of about 140,000 per club. All 12 teams muddled through.
TIO stadium on Thursday night: a home of footy?Credit: AFL Photos
When the competition next expanded to 14 teams by embracing West Coast and Adelaide in 1987, Victoria’s population was more than 4 million and the VFL’s reach stretched across three other states, too, making for a vastly bigger catchment.
Footy’s senior competition now consists of 18 clubs, drawing on a notional population of 26 million. Even allowing for a large couldn’t-give-a-stuff element on the other side of the Barassi line, that’s still a demographic of more than a million per club. The pyramid is getting higher, but the base is even broader.
That base is not evenly spread between clubs, of course. It never was. Fifty years ago, half the clubs subsidised the other half. They still do. If that model ever was to be abandoned, GWS and Gold Coast would have tipped it over the edge by now.
Besides, as former AFL commissioner Colin Carter posited in his report that opened the way for a Tasmanian team, sport does and should not work merely as a matter of solvency or otherwise. “A football competition is not just an ‘economic’ industry,” he wrote. “It is also a ‘social compact’ in which large and small revenue teams co-exist for very long times.
Hawthorn great Cyril Rioli at the footy in Darwin last Thursday.Credit: AFL Photos
“Unlike in the commercial world, the smaller teams survive and the larger clubs accept that this is so. That is the ‘social compact’ and this needs to be understood to make sense of what a Tasmanian team means for our competition.”
For Tasmania now, read NT.
Yes, footy once was amateur, then was semi-pro and is now lucratively professional. That leads to alarmist cries that there’s simply not enough money for 20 teams, or at least not enough money in the NT for a 20th team.
The thing is that it’s a national competition and is funded on that basis. The size of any one market doesn’t matter because the main source of revenue and the source of the game’s prosperity, media rights, is national. The size of any one club doesn’t matter because all are statutorily constrained in what they can spend anyway.
There are wheels within those social and economic wheels, but the bottom line is that the footy economy is big enough to accommodate another team if we want it to be.
Besides, governments of all hues are more than willing to pay to come along for the ride. Whether they should, they do. We must admit, though, that it’s been fully a year since a new government-funded stadium was proposed and whole minutes now since Geelong got their last grant.
Of course, the sporting landscape is more cluttered now, and all sports have to work harder for players and fans, but AFL still is dominant and has the greatest financial clout.
Then there are esoteric arguments. At 18 teams, the talent is already too diluted? Twenty would turn it into a blancmange? This is obtuse. Firstly, as demonstrated above, even at 20 teams, the pool of available talent would be as deep as ever. In the last fortnight alone, two non-system players have made their AFL debuts and left favourable first impressions.
The yearning for the good sepia-toned old days is overdone. If the spectacle is diminished – and I disagree that it is – it’s because of the way the talent is being coached and administered, not because it is lacking.
Besides, diluted against what standard? Unlike soccer and cricket, AFL is not vying with other countries and so at risk of slipping down some sort of international pecking order. Whatever that standard is, that’s what it is. Record crowds and ratings suggest the people like it well enough.
The moral argument for the inclusion of an NT team is no less compelling than for Tasmania. As with Tasmania, the NT has made a strong and distinctive contribution to footy. For a while, it felt like you couldn’t win a premiership without a Tiwi in your team.
But wait, there’s more. One of things we pride ourselves on about our country is that it’s big. With size comes diversity, of people, of the elements. A national competition should reflect this. It did last week, when the hardy annual about how much flying the Perth teams do made another fleeting appearance on the agenda, and when Geelong melted away in the steamy Darwin night.
AFL great Lance Franklin with children at the Michael Long Centre in Darwin.Credit: AFL Photos
It was tough on the Cats, but it was hard not to think how differently this match would have been played 4500 kilometres away in Hobart. It was an insight into the possible future and its many nuances and contrasts. Yes, it will take some original thinking to manage, but unless you prefer total homogeneity in your sport, it was tantalising.
A 20th team would have one other salutary effect. It would even up the competition. The clubs don’t like byes, and since it’s proved impossible to square things up by removing a team, the only alternative is to add one.
It would also give the AFL a chance to address the single biggest blight on the way it operates: the draw and its inherent inequity. It would take more original thinking. It might mean a single home-and-away round, 19 games each, which is fewer than now. You can hear the broadcasters shaking their heads and the AFL quaking in their boots.
Michael Long speaks at TIO stadium in 2020: another Darwin legend.Credit: Getty Images
But the AFL could throw in a knockout competition, a la the FA Cup. It emerged last week that players are agitating for more trophies; here’s one for free.
Of course, a 20-team competition would make the premiership an even rarer prize and more precious for it. Scarcity can be a good thing. We know this because that’s how it is in American football: 32 clubs, but only 18 games each per regular season.
The Americans do it: there’s the clincher for the AFL. Throw in a set of championship rings, as mooted recently, and they’ll have themselves a deal.
An NT team would be worthy in its own right, and a fillip for the competition. Go the … Crocodiles?
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