As many advantages as TD may have as an AFL venue, it has just as many disadvantages, which seem to outweigh the good.
It may say something that clubs need added financial incentives to schedule games there, rather than agreeing to them because that’s their first choice. If there was nothing in it for the AFL then you could doubt that they would offer these financial lures to certain clubs.
Given the constant criticism of the surface, and the potential long term effects on players who regularly play at the ground, if Clubs asked themselves what they would do in a perfect world, how many of them would agree to play there as often as they do? If they were honest about it, I doubt there could be many.
And that probably says a lot about where the competition has been headed. Money is and has been running – or should that be ‘ruining’ – the competition, ever since the AFL came into being. It’s not all that bad, but it seems that any and every decision clubs (particularly Victorian clubs) now make is based around what will make the most money. And players and supporters are often the ones who pay the price.
But it’s understandable that the AFL doesn’t seem to worry too much about the welfare of players or the inconvenience to supporters that any mind boggling decisions may cause because, in the overall scheme of things, they don’t really matter all that much anyway.
Common sense and logic are a bit overrated too, which is probably why the AFL got involved in a ground that wasn’t even built for Aussie Rules in the first place, or big enough to hold our crowds? Now that they have, they have to make it work financially. So don’t try and reason why things happen, they just do. As long as the AFL’s making money out of all this then we shouldn’t complain. Crowds are up you know.
