When a few hundred of the AFL’s stakeholders were invited to Penfolds’ Magill Estate in Adelaide earlier this month, they were not expecting a comedy routine. The AFL had asked the group to the picturesque winery to mark the opening of the game’s Gather Round, a week-long festival of football in South Australia.

There was no expense spared for the crowd, heavy with club presidents, chief executives, politicians, sponsors and broadcast partners including Foxtel boss Patrick Delany and its chairwoman, Siobhan McKenna. One veteran club president would later describe the dinner, with accompanying Penfolds wines, as “one of the best AFL dos I’ve ever been to”.