Richmond's $20 photo at the family day gets a mention in this ...Chasing flags in contempt of the fansGreg Baum | March 7, 2009
AT THIS time of year, some AFL clubs raise the drawbridge and begin to wall themselves in, fortifying against the unclean of the media and football public, communicating only by dispatch, encyclical or middle finger raised over the parapet. They make no excuses. Their business is to win premierships, they say, and all else must be subordinated to that cause. No one — player, official, boot-studder — must be distracted, not even for a moment.
On the cover of Hawthorn's media policy, distributed widely last week, is a picture of the Hawks in a tight huddle, heads down, arms around each other, identifiable only by their numbers, forming an image of a wall. Its subtext is plain: it's us against them. For a document that is supposed to facilitate understanding between club and media, it announces even before a page is turned that media is out of bounds.
Few will feel sorry for media, nor should they. We will fight our own fights, make our own representations, maybe even devise a Trojan horse, puzzling all the while how a few minutes' worth of a coach's attention or a player's plentiful spare time could compromise the premiership mission.
Fans will side with the club, as loyalty demands. Other clubs will side with the Hawks too, perhaps adopt their methods, for the premiership club is presumed to have all the answers. Hawthorn is far from alone in its bunker mentality anyway.
But there is a wider issue. The clubs are wrong when they say that their one and only purpose is to win premierships. They also have a duty to acknowledge, cherish and nurture the place of the game in the fabric of our community. That duty is owed not only to "stakeholders", a cold word and so un-football-like, but much more widely, to all who love and care for the game, and whose only interface with it is media.
For some time, football clubs have been retreating from this obligation. It began with the establishment of the idea that all those who failed to buy memberships somehow were failing their club and the game. Even as big-hearted a football person as Kevin Sheedy was complicit in this laying on of guilt. The burden of duty was not football's to its fans, but the fans' to football.
It takes no account of all who love the game as much as any member, but who are not members. They might be too old, or too young, or too far away, or unemployed, or too fully employed to get to matches every week. They might be absorbed in grass roots footy, nurturing future AFL players and, crucially, future members. They are football people, also proud, also passionate, and emotionally just as paid up as any other.
These non-members are presumed to be less engaged, less loyal, less passionate, less worthy of their club's attention, but it is not true. Morgan research indicates that members typically account for 10-14 per cent of supporters of a given club. They are an elite. The aggregate membership of Melbourne clubs is a little more than 300,000. If only they count, it doesn't make Melbourne much of a football town, does it?
If anything, the breach between the business of football and its heartland is widening. It emerged this week that some clubs have taken to charging fans to have their photographs taken with players. These include Collingwood, Richmond and, — predictably — Hawthorn, at a family day, ripping off its own. Last year, Hawthorn made a profit of $4.1 million. Next, clubs will charge for autographs; it has happened elsewhere. Truthfully, it is the clubs that should be charged, with extortion.Contempt for fans manifests in other ways. For tonight's pre-season semi-final, Carlton will field a team missing nine senior players, but featuring all its rookies, to play against full-strength Geelong. Extraordinarily, the AFL still will charge fans to get in. Meantime, for a practice match against Adelaide in Berri, in the South Australian riverland, Hawthorn will be represented by one of last year's premiership 22, ruckman Brett Renouf. Realising this, the Crows yesterday withdrew eight senior players.
Hard hit by drought and defections to the cities, the Riverland and neighbouring competitions have struggled to stay alive in recent seasons. Doubtlessly, the locals were excited to host this match. For their troubles, they are being sent ghost teams.
Some sympathy is due. Hawthorn has been hit hard by injury. Carlton, too, has been decimated. Both have had to make alternative arrangements, and that is fair enough. But not all of the missing are injured or tired; instead they are being "rested". Preparation is a scientifically fine and precise business, but the season proper is still three weeks away. Surely, in the circumstances, it would have been possible to field a few extra stars. But the premiership imperative must not, cannot, will not brook interference.
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