Is greed good again? JAKE NIALL
June 11, 2010 Football's unique brand of tribal loyalty is about to be given its toughest challenge.
IN 1970, Cameron Schwab received a special lace-up Richmond jumper from his father. As the administrator who ran the club, Alan Schwab decided that his six-year-old should wear No. 30, the jumper of the player synonymous with playing for it: Francis Bourke.
Little Cameron was slightly miffed with dad's choice. At school, all the Richmond-supporting kids wore No. 4 - Royce Hart's jumper. Royce, the high-marking champion forward, was as glamorous then as Buddy Franklin today. Selfless St Francis was not.
''I think it was dad, in his way, rounding out my football education,'' said Cameron, now in his second stint as chief executive of Melbourne.
The late Alan Schwab understood football's coalface culture and what really mattered. The jumper was a way of telling his son that Francis Bourke warranted respect. Schwab was encouraging the values that Bourke, whose father was a Tiger of old, upheld.
Loyalty was one of them.
Cameron Schwab noted that Bourke's No. 30 could have remained on his back until 1981, by which stage he was a teenager. Bourke, a member of five premiership teams, was a player who endured (though, Tiger-typically, not an enduring coach).
Doubtless, there are Geelong fathers who handed their sons the No. 29 number of Gary Ablett, reckoning that it was a safe bet to remain on their backs for at least a decade. Ablett jnr, like Bourke, was a son of the club, plus a local.
Yet, as we know, there's a chance that those No. 29s will be unceremoniously ripped from the backs of Geelong jumpers in October - as thousands of Melbourne-supporting kids were forced to tear off those No. 31s in 1964, when Ron Barassi flew the coop to Carlton, and Saints kids did 30 years hence when Tony Lockett became the face of football in Sydney.
These defections are memorable, in part because they aren't the norm in the indigenous game, which has been blessed - or cursed, depending on your perspective - with what may be termed a loyalty culture among its players.
Who wants to be a multi-millionaire? Israel Folau and Karmichael Hunt clearly do and they come from a competition in which it's fine for a player to announce he's leaving a team mid-season - Folau is even permitted to play in the prestigious state of origin. In the AFL, the departing player must conceal his intentions, because such moves are rare and not so well received by the tribe. An AFL player can never admit he left for money, either.
This loyalty culture, the AFL player's traditional preference to remain at his club unless he is severely deprived (of money, opportunity or success), is about to be tested by the influx of two new clubs, heavily funded by head office. Ablett is one of many who will be tempted by life-changing offers in the next few years.
The recruitment of two defecting NRL players already has some players bleating about money and the advent of free agency in 2012 is another revolutionary reform that could undermine the current fashion of sticking it out with your teammates.
''We're better at loyalty than we've ever been,'' explained Schwab, who acknowledges the prospect of change on the horizon, as the competition enters a new phase. ''Certainly, it [loyalty] is genuine. But it will be tested … there will be significant players who will change clubs and that will be big news at that time.
''But the fabric won't be lost. The thing that makes it great won't be lost.''
The AFL player's reluctance to leave the team that reared him is almost unique in world sport. In part, this is a historical legacy. But it is also the result of a highly regulated competition, in which the rules are heavily skewed in favour of the club. Free agency is an admission that the rules were highly restrictive to players.
The player of 2010 doesn't have the freedom of movement of most professional sports around the world. Luke Ball was out of contract and wanted to play for Collingwood; that he managed to get there was considered some kind of minor miracle, given the inability of Collingwood and the Saints to strike a deal. His path to the Pies was reliant upon good fortune - and the fortune Collingwood was paying him ''up front'' to dissuade rivals from drafting him.
''We've got the most controlled environment in world sport,'' said Schwab. To a degree, the players have been denied freedom of choice, and the equalised salary cap/draft system means the Bulldogs can pay Adam Cooney as much as Essendon or West Coast might. This is not the global, or even Australian, norm.
When Manchester United sells David Beckham, it replaces him with another English hero, Wayne Rooney. In European soccer, most professional American sport and indeed in our National Rugby League competition, players are trafficked between clubs like any other commodity. They are a fluid currency.
In these sports, the spiritual dimension comes from a sense of place and the supporters. The English Premier League's churches are fabled places - Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge, Anfield. There was no ground rationalisation, the venues aren't shared. And, each club has a choir that literally sings hymns. To support those clubs is to belong to a congregation.
In the AFL religion, where grounds are shared and the experience of going to the game is homogenised, identification with ''core'' players is far more significant than in overseas sport and competing codes here. ''It's locked into the players, it's about the players,'' said Schwab.
The fans view defectors as traitors - when Peter Moore, a Brownlow medallist and club captain left Collingwood for Melbourne for the 1983 season, his first game against the Pies saw him greeted with the words ''Moore Filth'' on a banner in the crowd.
The play-for-the-jumper ethos was last threatened in the 1980s, when it seemed the ''Greed is Good'' zeitgeist trickled down to football. Moore and fellow Brownlow medallist Kelvin Templeton left their clubs to take up huge deals at Melbourne. Sydney, under the flamboyant direction of Doc Edelsten, secured Greg Williams from Geelong, Gerard Healy from the Dees and Merv Neagle from the Bombers. Roger Merrett left Windy Hill and became a cornerstone of the hapless Brisbane Bears.
Collingwood and Richmond engaged in a vicious recruiting war that saw David Cloke, Geoff Raines and Brian Taylor purloined from the Tigers, who retaliated by signing a string of less talented Pies. Both clubs went to the edge of bankruptcy. Carlton, the most rapacious of clubs, signed a string of interstate superstars and was lambasted by Allen Aylett, the VFL boss, for ''raping'' the Swans by recruiting David Rhys-Jones.
Not all this movement was due to money. As one high-profile player who changed clubs in the '80s observed yesterday, there was not only a disparity between what players could make at different clubs, ''we also had a disparity of finals opportunity''. Flags were won only by Carlton, Hawthorn and Essendon, with Collingwood a perennial finalist. Players also left for the opportunity to play for a contender.
This brings us back to the current game's paradigm of loyalty, and of sticking together for success - Geelong. That the Cats haven't lost a single player in their top 15 in a period of extraordinary success is a source of considerable pride to their chief executive, Brian Cook, who thought this would be a ''bloody hard'' ask. ''One of the reasons we've been able to do it is that the players decided among themselves that they were going to stay together.''
Like Schwab, Cook has faith that greed won't be good again. ''You'll get some players who are motivated by money go away. By and large, that's not the rule. It's the exception.'' Players, he added, were as motivated by ''working in a good environment'' as money.
Geelong's only losses, thus far, did not play in their grand final teams - Brent Prismall and Shane Mumford. The latter, in Cook's estimation, was given an offer ''too good to refuse'' by the Swans. ''And there may be a few of those.'' The game, not just Geelong, is awaiting the outcome of one of ''those'' offers.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/is-greed-good-again-20100610-y0gb.html
