David Penberthy: Can someone remind Victoria that AFL is a national game
Sections of the Victorian sports media and AFL love nothing more than taking potshots at Adelaide’s clubs. If only they realised there are other states just as dedicated (and less infected), writes David Penberthy.
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By his own muted admission, if David Koch had his time over he would have crafted a more elegant response to the criticisms from ex-coach Mick Malthouse of Port’s Shanghai initiative.
In overreaching with his poor suggestion that Malthouse was probably in favour of the White Australia policy, Koch let everyone focus on the overblown nature of his reaction, rather than the small-minded and ill-informed nature of Malthouse’s remarks in demanding an end to the Shanghai game as a matter of principle.
It was a classic case of a regrettable overstatement being used to undermine the validity of someone’s position, being lectured as Koch was on the science of marketing by a man whose former club Carlton used to promote itself with a hovercraft, and who now draws an income by saying headline-grabbing things.
The attacks on Koch from over the border have been but one example this week of how sections of the Victorian sports media and people within the AFL itself love nothing more than taking potshots at Adelaide’s two clubs, sounding at times like they are willing them to fail.
Koch deserves credit as a lateral thinker and risk-taker who took over his club when it was at its lowest ebb and turned around its standing with new ideas. In partnership with his chief executive Keith Thomas, Koch changed the perception of the club from unwatchable basket case to a much more attractive proposition for both fans and sponsors.
The China deal was a bit of inspired left-field weirdness that created a new revenue stream for the club and exposed it to new business opportunities. It was never about formally launching the code into China, and despite the misapprehensions of Mick Malthouse, it was never about using the soft diplomacy of sport to legitimise a regime that has scant regard for human rights.
If Malthouse is so upset in this post-COVID-19 world about any type of cultural or economic engagement with China, he should logically also demand that our farmers, our universities, the steel and coal industries and every winemaker in the land boycott China too, erasing 30 per cent of our nation’s exports with the stroke of a pen.
As Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said this week amid rising tensions with Beijing, while China and Australia will always diverge on fundamental principles, with them being a totalitarian regime and us a democracy, our trade relationship is inextricably linked and of value to both nations.
Moreover, there is human value in having person-to-person contact between two countries whose political systems are diametrically opposed.
It’s in that latter category that Port’s Shanghai game should be regarded, a goodwill gesture that turns a quid, not some sporting validation of the Cultural Revolution.
While Kochie was copping a serve from Malthouse and his Victorian mates over the border, the usual suspects were lining up to slot the Crows over the Barossa business. As a Crows fan I was embarrassed and appalled when that story first broke. It felt maddening that, in a state that had done so well in fighting this virus, an organisation that so epitomises the state may have broken the law.
As things unfolded, after SA Police investigated at the club’s urging, it became clear that this was less a concerted or brazen act of disregard for state laws regarding social distancing, than an accidental stuff-up that briefly breached an AFL rule.
The continuing fury out of Melbourne even after that fact became apparent was hysterical. I won’t name the bloke because he’s suffered enough on social media, but that Channel 7 reporter deserves a Walkley for tweeting that his mail was that the Crows would lose draft picks and be fined $100,000 for this egregious breach. Better get a new mailman, son.
When the AFL eventually came out with a very reasonable punishment, rightly focusing on Ben Hart’s lack of oversight but suspending punishment on the players, supposedly level-headed Victorian journos were demanding premiership points be docked, placing this in the same category as the Essendon drugs scandal.
The Vics derive their indignation from an unyielding belief that the golf course mishap was a major crime because it ignored the all-powerful legal strictures of the AFL, as if the AFL deserves more reverence than that High Court, and also because it may have given the Crows an unfair advantage.
To this I’d say two things:
1. Didn’t they see our pre-season? and;
2. Surely no one in Victoria can use the words “unfair advantage” with a straight face.
When GWS met Richmond in last year’s Grand Final, the Giants were playing their 20th game at the MCG in their entire eight-year history, while Richmond had made 113 appearances there in that same period, including the final seven games in a row of the 2019 home and away season.
That’s what unfair advantage looks like.
Even with the AFL scratching around trying to find a way to restart this year’s season, it’s weird that no one in AFL House actually looked at Western Australia and South Australia, with barely any COVID-19 cases, and wondered whether the competition could shift west for the year, rather than subjecting us to the high-infection state of Victoria.
I know the word we normally use to describe this Victorian mindset is arrogance, but it’s a bit too harsh. I just don’t think any of this stuff occurs to them.
It helps explain how you can observe the 150th anniversary of the Port Adelaide Football Club by kicking them out of the SANFL, not even realising it was their birthday.
We saw that again with the reaction over the border to our chief medical officer’s rejection of the AFL’s preferred fly-in, fly-out model. It was almost as if the AFL assumed that the WA and SA governments would simply fall into line before the apparently higher authority of AFL House.
I love my footy, but I am happy this decision was made on the basis of medical text books, not the contents of the Footy Record.