AFL must stop players walking out on their clubs and making a mockery of contract laws
The Adelaide Crows need to ask the AFL why contracted players can just demand to break their contract, walk out on the club that has heavily invested in them and chase a better deal.
- The big Movers and Shakers in 2018
- Pyke gives reason for McGovern wanting out
- Blight: 50 years of footy
- Mitch could be stuck: Fagan
THIS nonsense has to stop. The AFL must step in and prevent players who are under contract from walking out on their clubs.
The Crows, for some reason seem particularly vulnerable. It is infuriating to their fans. It must be more infuriating to the Crows recruiting team who, having identified a talented young player, and agreed to terms, now watch him walk out the door.
Last year it was Charlie Cameron, this year it’s Mitch McGovern who is trying to break his contract and leave for a better offer.
At least Jake Lever, who walked out on his team-mates last year, was out of contract.
The Lever camp will insist that the Crows bungled that negotiation from the very first meeting but that’s another story. Footballers and their managers are making a mockery of contract laws and the clubs do not have enough AFL support to prevent players breaking their contracts. The only time a player should be allowed to break his contract is for the most exceptional reasons of compassion.
Charlie Cameron, having been recruited and developed by the Crows from football obscurity in Perth, came up with the lame excuse that he wanted a transfer to Brisbane “to be closer to family.”
And they let him get away with it because the AFL systems are not strong enough. Mitch McGovern should be forced by the AFL to serve out his contract.
The AFL does have in place free agency rules that allow a player who has given a club “adequate” service to leave.
Clubs are compensated with a draft pick for losing such players, although the system for deciding just how early is that draft pick remains one of football’s great mysteries. A player out of contract who is not yet eligible for free agency can leave but if his club of choice can’t come to terms with his current club, he has to go into the draft in which case his current club will get no compensation.
While he can nominate a salary, there is no guarantee that he will end up at the club of his choice. Port fans will remember only too well that their club played that hard line in 2004 with out-of-contract Nick Stevens who wanted to go to Collingwood.
He ended up at Carlton after Port forced him into the pre-season draft. Port received nothing for him but at least a precedent had been set. Players don’t often walk out on their Port Adelaide contracts.
However in recent years, players under contract have been walking out on their clubs and forcing that club to accept inadequate compensation by threatening to “retire” or stand out of the game. Enough is enough.
The AFL can stop this rorting of the system forthwith. A contract is a contract and unless there exists those previously mentioned reasons of compassion, or perhaps medical reasons, the player must be forced to play out his contract. If he chooses to “retire”, he will then be subjected to a significant fine. In the past the AFL has fined kids who have not yet been drafted for trying to manipulate the draft.
This is just another more sophisticated system of manipulating the draft. It even more insidious though in that the negotiations are happening in secret while players like McGovern and Cameron are supposedly committed to their current club and team-mates. Taylor Walker has every right to berate those players who walk out on his club.
The AFL tries to ensure equity in the competition with a draft and salary cap. It is of course a restriction of free trade but players virtually sign away their legal rights.
The AFL staunchly defends the right to impose those restrictions.
Free agency exists but that has simply become a benefit for the stronger clubs. Hawthorn, for instance treats the draft almost with disdain, electing instead to hand pick the best of the players at other clubs.
The secret to true equity and fairness in this compromised competition is to give the teams at the bottom of the ladder more opportunity to improve and the teams at the top less ability to “steal” the opposition’s best players.
The solution is simple and it doesn’t lie with compensation draft picks. It is in the salary cap. Teams at the bottom of the ladder, on a sliding scale, should receive extra money in the salary cap. But here is the critical component.
Teams who finish at the top of the ladder, on a similar sliding scale, lose money in the salary cap. The stronger clubs will be forced to shed out of contract players. Players and clubs have made a mockery of club loyalty anyway.
Force those stronger clubs to restrict what they can pay their players and therefore make the weaker clubs more attractive to these “loyal” players who are faced with a reduction in salary. Then we will see how much a contract is worth!