A bit about us and Dustin Martin ........
Bear bones * Gerard Healy
* From: Herald Sun
* May 15, 2010 With stars rejecting overtures at a rapid rate, Gold Coast may end up fielding a team of no-names that makes the 'Carrara Koalas' of the 1980s appear a powerhouse.
IF THE alarm bells aren't ringing in Andrew Demetriou's office, they should be.
With just nine months until Gold Coast's AFL debut, the positive landscape of the past 12 months is changing rapidly.
The list of who isn't playing for the Coast gets longer by the day, and is alarmingly significant for both expansion teams - in fact, for all clubs.
The likes of Joel Selwood, Lance Franklin and Michael Hurley have all been rubbed off Gold Coast list manager Scott Clayton's extensive wish list. If Gary Ablett's name gets a line through it as well, we are entitled to begin asking questions.
Exactly who is going to play for the Lifesavers? And will the team be in need of resuscitation from day one?
The inability to get the Ablett deal done has almost been a warning light to other players. If he doesn't sign, the chances of gaining a group of genuine match-winners, around which to build, looks certain to fail.
Even if Jarrod Harbrow or Campbell Brown were to take up the offer, there still wouldn't be close to enough talent heading north.
It seems unlikely there is a group of hidden, established guns set to be revealed which can short-circuit the development phase and make Gold Coast worth watching on TV.
Clayton conceded the problem this week, saying the club might have to trade early draft picks for experienced players. It is a strategy that is counter-productive to the team's
ultimate goal and hard evidence of the potential problem. Trading away the future is not Clayton's style, and suggests a looming crisis.
THE BAD NEWS - BEARS ARE BACKThis is not just about Gold Coast.
The scenario has the capacity to become a fatal recruiting storm as the knock-on effect to the Greater Western Sydney team is disturbingly obvious.
From a recruiting sense, selling the Gold Coast to players in comparison to GWS is like chalk and cheese. If Clayton can't land any decent fish, without trading away the future, what hope has Kevin Sheedy got?
Given the draft and salary-cap concessions, expectations were high the Gold Coast team would prosper quickly, but without a core of talented senior players that's unlikely.
The one thing you need to sell in new markets is a winning team.
Despite its best intentions, the AFL's blueprint for building a competitive outfit in both expansion zones looks as though it might produce another Brisbane Bears.
Of course, the Bears were slapped together in 1987 using the cast-offs of the 12 VFL teams, which each had to send three listed players to Carrara.
With a few exceptions such as Mark Williams and Brad Hardie, the Bears' original outfit was a host of untried WAFL and SANFL players, coupled with unwanted VFL players.
The signing of Williams was the most significant. He was an influential player, a Collingwood skipper who had significant pulling power on other recruiting targets.
Williams was exactly what Gold Coast sees in Ablett: a player of great value on the field, but vastly more important for the lead he would give to others.
If a marquee player doesn't come soon, the list of uncontracted players will disconcertingly thin.
Already Sheedy is flagging that another year or two of concessions at the draft will be required and it's hard to dispute his assessment.
But it would leave some skinny drafts for other bottom teams.
Still, that's a far better option than the potential destruction of the competition's payment structure, which is already on the line as an unseen byproduct of expansion.
The advances to established players are obviously so unsuccessful that the focus of GWS has evidently shifted to offering big money for talent, regardless of age.
For example, there are strong suggestions of offers of about $800,000, to youngsters such as Richmond's Dustin Martin. That would put him in the AFL's top 20 paid players and has moved the Tigers to make a strong counter offer.
It was expected the inflation would be felt at the top end not the bottom of the ladder.
MONOPOLY MONEY
If the only way the new clubs can build a competitive team is to offer talented teens monopoly money figures, then the model for their establishment is completely flawed and has to be addressed - now.
How does Richmond compete with such an offer? And how would the club be adequately compensated?
I have no trouble paying superstars from other codes over-the-top money to try to play, promote, and, more importantly, break down the cultural barriers that could unlock a vast array of supporters and players from the northern states.
But the Martin offer threatens to distort Richmond's salary distribution beyond commercial sense.
If recruiting youngsters at any cost replaces recruiting senior players who look hard to shift, we're going down the wrong path.
The lack of separation of power between club and governing body, so evident in the Melbourne Storm fiasco, could produce another damaging outcome, this time to our own game.
Surely Demetriou can't responsibly establish a team that requires such a distortion of accepted salary payments to third-year players when it's the AFL's money doing the distorting.
The struggling teams will suffer, and the players will lose perspective of their worth. TIME FOR A RETHINKWe all want the Lifesavers to prosper and for Sheedy's GWS to take root quickly - and every club and most supporters seem to accept they will pay some price as the game expands.
Sheedy did just that when he lost Gavin Wanganeen for no compensation to the first Port Adelaide team. But supporters won't accept losing hope for the future if it is AFL money that takes them away.
Perhaps the AFL needs to restrict the movement of U21 players unless by mutual consent. Maybe each club should be forced to delist one or two mid-range players to a pool from which the two new clubs can pick, so they don't have to trade away their future.
The plan of building a competitive team around a core of talented senior players and top-line youngster looks like coming up well short.
Instead there is the potential to produce unforeseen outcomes that strike at the heart of the battling and established clubs.
More modelling work urgently needs to be done to ensure that in trying to expand we don't end up contracting. Yes, the alarm bells are ringing. But is anyone listening?
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/bear-bones/story-e6frf9jf-1225867042327
