Car parks, flights and sheet metal: How the AFL world has been split between bigger and smaller clubs
Not so long ago, one club chose not to pay for game vision that has become the clear go-to in the footy world. The gap between the rich and the poor clubs in footy may be closing, but there are still some clear differences.
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Usually, player satisfaction comes down to winning.
But sometimes it’s also dependent on carparking.
In the modern era of the soft cap, where spending within football departments is regimented across the board, the gap between the so called ‘rich’ clubs and the ‘poor’ clubs is thinner than ever.
One of the biggest gaps for Victorian sides comes to parking, a source of frustration for North Melbourne players for years at Arden St.
Players have parked in the Woolworths nearby, and some in the know have suggested the Nick Theodossi Prestige Cars outlet across the road from the club has become a pseudo car park.
The Roos don’t have a player car park, the only club in Victoria in that boat, fenced in by their surrounds at their Arden St home.
“A few parking fines get around Arden St,” one ex-Roo star said.
The City of Melbourne runs the precinct at Arden St and gleefully collects parking fines whenever possible and spots are hard to come by with a public pool next door.
The Roos even share some of their office space with Fencing Victoria, the state offshoot of the Olympic sport Australia has never medalled in.
Where some clubs shut themselves in, Arden St is genuinely wide open to the public, with dog walkers and schoolchildren often milling around as the Roos train.
Short of building a monstrously expensive underground car park, there isn’t a lot the Roos can do to ease the end-of-commute complaints.
And the commute is seen as one of the best in Melbourne, with Arden St an inner-city location without the hassle of Punt Rd and Olympic Blvd that Richmond, Collingwood and Melbourne deal with.
Parking is a worry for everyone who commutes to work, so it’s no surprise it’s no different in footy.
It hasn’t driven players away though, the Roos have an exceptional track record in recent seasons of keeping star players at the club.
If money sent out to clubs from the AFL is an indication of whether a club is rich or poor, last year Gold Coast had its hand out the most, taking in nearly $35m from head office.
Next in order was GWS, Brisbane, North Melbourne and St Kilda.
Melbourne ranked in the middle but has long been seen as a few steps behind the behemoths like Collingwood, West Coast and Essendon.
Frustration is ever-present for Melbourne players who have to either commute out to Casey Fields for training or set up in the inner city on at Gosch’s Paddock, alternating sessions regularly.
The Dees know the split for the club is a problem and have been working to build a new home at Caulfield, but that has forced players to ponder whether they were better off living closer to the city or on the Casey side of town.
The little things count.
On the pay slips of some players charges for meals eaten at the club appear, subtracted from the takehome pay.
That isn’t limited to ‘poor’ clubs, as some teams put that cost in the pay slip as a player spend.
A former Roo who played for North Melbourne last decade gushed about the club jumping on board with a full time chef when Brad Scott was coach, and the club “did that better than anyone”.
One experienced player manager batted lunch expenses off as extremely minor compared to the regular workforce.
THE OLD DAYS
The stories of the clubs with less cutting corners have run dry and recent years, but they still reverberate within the walls.
Bulldogs players in the early 2000s remember the club choosing not to pay for behind the goals vision when it first entered the game, as other clubs took up the new, revealing footage that has become the go-to for coaches when reviewing games.
The Dogs were notorious in the playing group of that era for cheapening out on flights.
Despite rules that a certain amount of business class seats had to be purchased for players, the Dogs wouldn’t fill up a booking.
Fremantle used to charge players $50-100 to book single rooms in hotels when on the road, something that breached the rules at the time and has since long been rectified.
Before they left Moorabbin for Seaford, a move that would be reversed not long after, the Saints had a bee infestation in the gym during a finals series.
And a piece of sheet metal famously flew off the roof of the club rooms and slashed into the turf during a training session, miraculously missing players out on the grass.
When it rained, the floor at North Melbourne’s gym in the old Arden St used to be littered with buckets collecting drips through the leaky roof.
Now the so-called ‘have nots’ of the league are not so far behind.
The Saints and Dogs have fit-for-purpose revamped facilities, as does North Melbourne, and Melbourne backs its facilities, even if the club is split a little.
Footy player turned podcaster Dylan Buckley famously carried on with a bit that GWS didn’t wash their towels often enough.
And Ben McKay was shocked he had to bring socks to games when he joined Essendon, something that wasn’t an issue at North Melbourne.
“I always forgot and had to ask the poor property guy, sorry mate I left my socks at home again,” he told the Ben and Harry podcast.
EARNING POWER
A simple theory about blockbusters generally stands up according to those in the know – the bigger clubs play more bigger games, and that means more eyeballs on players.
In the off-field influencing space, in general players who play for larger clubs – like Collingwood – have more followers on social media, and more currency when approaching brands for paid partnerships.
Pies veteran Jack Crisp has had a stellar career but rarely been in the top five players at the club, yet he works with media group Jake The Agency on brand partnerships.
The ‘poorer’ clubs have stars – like Marcus Bontempelli at the Bulldogs – who break through, but those numbers thin out.
Where Crisp has been able to leverage his following from a big club, others at clubs followed by less fans haven’t had the same chances.
Few St Kilda players impact the brand space, for example.
Those in the industry believe the gap in this space is widening, with the superstars always on the top of the wishlist, and usually those players are from the big clubs.
“The brands hoping to crack into the AFL market and the AFL audiences will always look at the big dogs,” one insider said.
Those at interstate clubs are often playing in a different pool but it is general wisdom that Swans or Lions players get more earning opportunities than Giants or Suns.
Several industry figures spoken to suggested that bigger clubs simply have better contacts for post-football life because they have a bigger pool of fans to tap into.
Carlton’s business and networking lunches have drawn attention lately, with Tom De Koning a regular attendee as the Blues pitched a case for him to stay at the club amid a monster offer from St Kilda.
“It makes sense that there are more fans at bigger clubs so there are more options in that space,” one player manager said.
But an ex-veteran player at multiple ‘smaller’ clubs said he walked out of the game with a deep list of contacts.
“There are wealthy people and good contacts at every club, I think that’s a little bit more player driven,” he said.
St Kilda has long boasted a roll call of famous fans, and a rolodex of big successful business figures like Lindsay Fox and current president Andrew Bassat.
The lack of blockbusters has clearly been a factor on player movement in the past.
“The major difference for players when you are recruiting is just the difference in crowds and games at the MCG,” one ex-player said.
“You can draw a pretty clear distinction between the bigger clubs getting prime time games as opposed to your Sunday twilight (timeslot).”
One player manager said: “if you lined everybody up and said, ‘Where do you want to play?’, nine of out of 10 would say the MCG in front of 80,000”.
The sides that have played predominantly home games at Marvel Stadium haven’t had anywhere near the same success as the MCG tenants this century.
None of St Kilda, North Melbourne, Essendon or Carlton have won a flag since 2000, with Western Bulldogs the only team that plays majority of games at Marvel Stadium to salute.
The last time any of those five clubs finished the home-and-away season in the top four was back in 2010, when both the Dogs and Saints were there.
THE BIG CLUB HEAT
Geography helps, as the Magpies regularly invite family and friends of players back over a footbridge to their home base the AIA Centre for a bite to eat after an MCG game.
The Giants, also attempt similar, to build a country club atmosphere.
St Kilda lost free agent Josh Battle to Hawthorn last year, in part because the defender preferred the family-oriented atmosphere at Waverley.
The Saints have worked hard this year to host regular family lunches to get more children and family members around the club.
On the flip side of potential opportunities at the big clubs is the pressure that comes with it.
Collingwood is expected to go hard for Ben King next year but the star goalkicker loves the anonymity of the Gold Coast.
Players have long loved the chance to get out of Melbourne and away from the scrutiny, with Brodie Grundy currently flourishing in Sydney.
Carlton players have been put through the wringer lately and with the big club positives come the negatives about potential trades.
The Blues were expected to be better this year but as they sit three spots clear of the Saints, the intense scrutiny is focused on Ikon Park, rather than Moorabbin.
That means De Koning could avoid the microscope somewhat as a big fisher in a smaller pond.
“The privilege of being at a big club is that you are relevant and people talk about your club a lot,” Harry McKay told AFL 360 recently.
“You can’t hide from that, that’s undeniable.
“As a player being at a big club, there’s always hypotheticals that are thrown around.”
While some doors are opened by the power clubs, sometimes it’s better to be on the quieter side with the door shut.
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