Who's brave enough to play Bennell Powerball? Damian Barrett
AFL.com.au
September 17, 2015THERE is a very big deal to be made here.
It is available to the club most prepared to leap into the fearful, ugly unknown. It entails massive risk, will almost certainly cause problems. Your supporters will question you, maybe forever.
The potential fallout? Total embarrassment for everyone associated with it.
Potential reward? Like finding the numbers in Powerball. In a jackpot week.
The deal’s name is Harley Bennell, he of Gold Coast Football Club infamy.
In Bennell’s football life, there has been alcohol, drugs, generally poor behaviour and a whole lot of questionable commitment.
But, there has also been breathtaking, elite football.
Do the form yourself, but recent examples include the 39 disposals he managed in his return to football against Adelaide in round 17 this year after a club-imposed three-week ban, the brilliant match-winning performance in round seven last year against North Melbourne, after he had missed the opening six rounds with a serious calf injury, and the six goals versus Geelong last year in round 14.
AFL clubs are so conservative when it comes to recruiting bad boys. In American sports, where ownership of teams is corporate and there are no such things as two-year plans let alone five-year plans, only the pursuit of instant wins, bad boys are all the rage, provided they can play their chosen sport at the highest output.
If Bennell was an NFL player, there would be 31 clubs chasing him hard right now.
But he’s an AFL player, which means not every club outside the one with which he is listed wants him.
This is not to trivialise his past problems, for clearly he has issues which are not conducive to optimum sports output.
But a smart club, right now, would devise an arrangement which is no-lose for it.
Bennell’s talents as a footballer are so elite that he alone is capable of taking a losing preliminary finalist in one year to a Grand Final the next year, a losing semi-finalist to a prelim final and maybe a Grand Final, a losing elimination finalist (hello Richmond!) to quite possibly a Grand Finalist.
He is that good. He is the cream on the cake.
Yes, he is not the answer for every team. In fact, we would recommend that teams which feel they will not compete for a top eight finish in the next two years go nowhere near this man.
If he is the best player on your list with the responsibility that comes with that, look out. He certainly hasn’t handled being the second most gifted player on the Gold Coast list.
The deal to which we refer also applies to the Suns.
Naturally, expectedly, justifiably, they will try to get maximum return for him in the transaction they opt for in relieving their books and playing list of his salary and problems.
Naturally, expectedly, justifiably, the Suns will want to send him to a poorly performed club so that Bennell doesn’t be seen to hurt them for his loss, and also because those poorly performed clubs will have access to better draft picks for such an exchange.
All 17 clubs outside of the Suns would not think twice about having Bennell on their list if the issue was purely football talent.
Which leaves the better credentialed clubs in the box seat for his talents. They have the reason to recruit him, and the challenge to make it work for them.
Rather than consigning Bennell to the too-difficult category, they should be devising offers which are heavily based on performance as an individual, and by extension as a team, and therefore placing the onus on Bennell himself to make it work financially.
Make the first year of the contract purely performance based (as in, no really big money unless he plays at least 16 games), add another clause that instant dismissal will come on the back of an even minor off-field incident at any stage of the contract, and then add some seriously lucrative financial incentives for a premiership, and woo-la, it’s a no-lose situation for a prospective club.
In 2015, AFL clubs have become ridiculously scared of, and beholden to, the thoughts of their members and supporters.
But as per our devised deal potential, selling the potential recruit of Bennell to members and supporters would be a no-lose scenario too.
If you are a middle-aged coach or middle-aged official of a club which likes Bennell’s on-field game but not his off-field game, you should not automatically rule him out.
His problems are alcohol based, not drugs based.
Had it not been for News Limited recently deciding to pay money for, and then publish, photos of him doing drugs when he was a 20-year-old - after multiple other media outlets chose not to pay for the same photos simply because the photos were of a then-impressionable 20-year-old doing something he shouldn’t have been doing - then the perception of Bennell would not be so stark.
And before you think we are taking a lenient view of drug use, we are not. Check our regularly expressed views on drugs and particularly the too-lenient AFL drugs policy. But there is not one parent, who at some stage, hasn’t asked him or herself if they really know if their late-teen or early-20s son or daughter has done drugs.
Bennell has. And so have hundreds of thousands of other Australians his age. So what. And again, this is not making light of his off-field issues. Bennell's drugs issues have always come on the back of alcohol consumption. Get him into the right AFL club environment, and that will sort itself out.
Bennell can play football like very few in this country.
There’s a fit somewhere - the troubled soon-to-be-23-year-old with a team in the premiership window.
There is a deal there. The smart club will make it. And we predict that club will look back on that deal and think it got it cheap.
http://www.afl.com.au/news/2015-09-17/whos-brave-enough-to-play-bennell-powerball
