Stop The Press: We're Not Angry At Losing A Final

The Age

Saturday July 30, 2005

ROHAN CONNOLLY

FINALLY, sanity prevails. It took years of squabbling, bitching and bartering, but with weeks to spare, the AFL and MCC have delivered a result on the preliminary final issue which can only be seen as football justice.

Four times already, West Coast (twice), Adelaide and Brisbane had been denied what was rightfully theirs, not by the rules of the competition, but a contractual obligation relevant to only one of five AFL states.

If the integrity of the premiership is indeed the priority it's supposed to be, what was the point of the AFL re-working the final-eight format back in 2000 in the interests of fairness, when any potentially flawless system still stood to be compromised by the MCC contract? It's subsequently happened twice.

Full points to Brisbane last season for having taken on the chin the ridiculously unfair "home" preliminary final against Geelong at the MCG. But the noises made then by the league about a compromise would have made a repeat a year on unacceptable.

It's pretty simple, isn't it? Well, to seemingly everyone connected with AFL football and anyone who casts a keen eye over the competition on either side of the fence. But not to some of those allegedly reflecting those views.

Is it just me, or when it comes to matters AFL football, do the front pages of the Herald Sun seem stuck in some sort of time warp?

Last Monday, the tabloid's respected chief football writer Mike Sheahan argued, as I had in these pages, that the preliminary final stand-off was an impasse that had to be resolved with a decisive victory for fairness.

In Sheahan's employer's case, it was an argument that obviously fell on deaf ears. The news pages of the tabloid in recent days have continued to push a parochial line at odds not only with their senior writers - and a football public that has moved on - but its own apparent supporters.

On Wednesday, as the imminent compromise became apparent, it ran a story headlined: "Business backs home of footy". A galaxy of powerful figures, politicians and business people were "demanding" that the MCG remain "the AFL finals capital", it thundered.

Some thunder. Yes, it was going to be sad, and perhaps costly, for the MCG to be vacant the penultimate weekend of the football year, agreed the likes of Premier Steve Bracks, Ron Walker, Federal Sports Minister Rod Kemp and a spokesman for the Victorian Employers' Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

But not one said that the AFL had made the wrong decision seeking the compromise. Bracks and Walker cited the "have to accept it's a national competition" refrain, Kemp said it was "a matter for the AFL" and acting Lord Mayor Gary Singer said he was praying for a Victorian team to rise to the top.

Gee, they're some tough so-called "demands". It's amazing the league didn't forget about it then and there. A fiery editorial said "Victorian footy fans will be angered". Have they been? They seemed enthusiastic enough about last year's first non-Victorian grand final between Port Adelaide and Brisbane, one of the better play-offs of the last 20 years. This week, they haven't exactly beaten down the doors at AFL headquarters. Nor filled the letters pages.

On Thursday, the same day the Herald Sun led the paper with "Great Footy Snub", it vox-popped five people on the issue. Three thought the AFL was right, one didn't, and one was in favour of anything that ensured the ballet didn't clash with the footy.

The people aren't angry. So why this pressing need to create an agenda for some misplaced parochial angst which no longer really exists?

There's irony, certainly. Had they succeeded in helping preserve the "sacred" site of one of two preliminary finals, how would the self-appointed "state warrior" have reacted to an all-interstate clash?

Hopefully, not with the same yawning indifference with which it greeted last year's grand final, sarcastically suggesting Saturday afternoon alternatives like "mowing the lawns" and "taking the kids to the flicks". Yep, let's keep the big ones here, but tell people not to go if the teams we don't like aren't in 'em.

On this one, the people are way ahead of the paper, whose views they supposedly reflect and help shape. They were back in 1992, when West Coast, the first non-Victorian premier, was accorded a generous and warm reception on its grand final lap of honor, that somehow in the Sunday Herald Sun became a torrent of abuse and pelted objects.

It was tired, inaccurate rhetoric then. But far less excusable now we've had a national competition for 15 years, and after six of the past eight premiership teams have been from interstate.

It's old news. But someone clearly forgot to tell the guys on the little paper's news desk. Can't wait for their update on John Coleman's knee injury.