Patrick Smith mentions us as basically one of the dumb clubs.
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Patrick Smith
The Australian
10 September 2016... football is not an easy beast to manage. Clubs need money, clubs need wins. It can be a treacherous mix.
To regulate and curb excesses, competition bureaucrats try to balance codes by a combination of salary cap limits, marquee players, player drafts and free agency. It is called equalisation.
The term suggests that the sport is governed in such a manner that every team has an equal prospect of winning the premiership. It does not pan out that way. It does not even get close.
This year Sydney topped the AFL ladder from Geelong second and Hawthorn third. But since 2005 Sydney have won the premiership twice, Geelong three times and Hawthorn four.
That’s nine out of 11 titles going to just three clubs. And this when the two pillars of equalisation, total player payments and the national draft, have been in place long enough to turn over premiership winners far more regularly. The draft was introduced in 1986 and five years later the salary cap was set at $1.5 million a year. It is 10 times that now.
After all, the draft is meant to provide the underperforming clubs with an early choice of the best young talent in the country and the salary cap is there to stop the rich simply ransacking the market with their money.
When the Richmond plotters announced last Monday their fumbling bid to replace the Tiger board, they made note of Richmond’s position on the ladder compared with that of Hawthorn at the end of the 2004 season. Hawthorn had finished last on the ladder with four wins and Richmond sat atop the Hawks by percentage only. One game better were the Bulldogs with five wins. The grand final was won by Port Adelaide who beat Brisbane, who were trying for a fourth consecutive premiership.
This season Hawthorn finished third, Bulldogs seventh, Port 10th, Richmond 13th and Brisbane 17th. In between 2004 and this year’s finals, Richmond and Port Adelaide have had four coaches, the Bulldogs five, Brisbane will have a fifth coach next year. Alastair Clarkson has coached Hawthorn since 2005.
Hawthorn have their four premierships, Richmond three finals appearances (no wins), the Bulldogs have been in six finals series and Port five, losing the second preliminary final to Hawthorn by just three points. All these clubs have had a look at the finals, some more than others and some have made a better fist of it than others.
So it is fair comment that the draft and salary cap restrictions turn over clubs. The new tax on club football department spending also tightens exorbitant outlays on coaching, training and medical staff and other related expenses.
The reason that the equalisation measures don’t guarantee all clubs romping wins in grand finals was at the root of the Richmond plotters’ appalling news conference. Lack of football intelligence.
The Richmond members who are seeking to become the new board of the Tigers were exposed as most naive in football terms. The central plank to their spiel was the football department needed to be fixed. They did not have any insight how to turn things around. Not a germ of an idea.
There isn’t an AFL follower who would not be aware that the football department at the Tigers needs rejuvenation. The screaming issue is fixing it, not just recognising the problem. We’ve gone way past that. Richmond, out of the finals for the first time in four years, won seven fewer games than last season. The present board is awaiting an external review of all football operations.
The league has made it a little muddy by calling the cap and draft as well as clamps on spending as equalisation. They would have been better termed opportunity.
The best tools money can buy and access to the best parts aren’t worth much chop if they are in the hands of poor mechanics.
When the AFL circle of opportunity swings around to each club it is of limited value unless these chances can be swooped on by the brightest talents.
Hawthorn would have been a dominant club without opportunity. In 2005, it got itself a bloke who would turn out to be the best coach of his era. Same for Geelong. From 2000 to 2010 they were coached by Mark Thompson (two premierships) and from there it has been Chris Scott, who won the 2011 premiership. They are quality coaches.
From 2003 to 2010, Paul Roos took the Swans to one premiership, and runners-up while missing the finals just once. John Longmire took over in 2011, won a premiership in 2012 and has never missed the finals.
That is three clubs with a coaching pedigree of the highest order. They would always have been competitive clubs but they were also enhanced by recruiters and list management teams that understood opposition players as well as they did their own.
So when players were required in the draft, through the academy or by trade they invariably got their man. If you were to draw up a ladder on decision-making alone, Hawthorn, Sydney and Geelong would still top it.
Football teams won’t get better through the opportunity of draft and cap as a given.
They will get better by getting smarter. Only the dumb will inherit the wooden spoon.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/opinion/patrick-smith/football-of-all-types-is-not-an-easy-beast-to-manage/news-story/73517d69c386bb1d9167ede61847dc6e
