Wreck it Ralph: 17 changes new AFL CEO Andrew Dillon can make to help change the game
Would Channel 7 really give up the money it makes from Better Homes and Gardens to appease footy fans? Incoming AFL CEO Andrew Dillon must give them no choice, writes Jon Ralph.
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Andrew Dillon is weeks away from inheriting the AFL’s hot seat.
Presumably once the AFL CBA deal is done Gillon McLachlan will still stick around for a September farewell – with the odd long lunch included.
But by then Dillon will be in charge as he works behind the scenes to assemble his crack squad for the AFL’s new era on challenges big and small.
The meaty stuff – a meaningful concussion fund, a rebranding of the AFLW, cutting red tape to maximise participation in community footy – will take time.
And his challenge will to be find legacy-related projects to define his time as AFL CEO after McLachlan introduced the AFLW competition, brokered a Tasmanian team (if they want it) and helped save footy from Covid.
But for the detail-oriented Dillon, there are also many tweaks and changes he could make in the next 12 months.
Some of them are hugely consequential.
And others small, yet important enough for the fans to give him some credits in the bank before the headwinds arrive through the controversies he will inevitably have to handle.
Here’s the 17 changes Dillon should look at when he takes charge.
1. Friday night footy starts at 7.20pm
The fans are desperate for an earlier start to prime time footy, and the change is overdue. Viewing habits change so dramatically within 12 months, let alone a decade.
People who might have worked from home on a Friday post-Covid just don’t want to wait until nearly 8pm for the weekend’s biggest game.
Nor should they.
Channel 7 will cry poor given they make more money from showing Better Homes and Gardens across Australia before a 20-minute lead-in to Friday night footy.
So, do a deal with them. Make halftime seven minutes longer so they can cram in two more ad breaks. Would anyone actually notice?
2. Stop taking the mickey out of fans with the grand final starting time
The league’s charade each year goes like this. The AFL CEO drops some pre-season hints about how fans love twilight footy, a journo takes the hint and writes that the grand final WILL be twilight, and the league conditions the market.
Then after we have waited until April for a decision, the league sticks with tradition.
My view – keep it at 2.30pm.
But whatever the decision, we can all deal with it. Just don’t string us along for months in some elaborate game.
3. Don’t listen to the ‘leave the game alone’ brigade
Keep aggressively tweaking the game to make it the best it can be. The Collingwood-Port Adelaide game had some really tough insufficient intent calls.
But the spirit of that rule is absolutely brilliant.
Keep the ball in the corridor, keep the game in motion, reduce the amount of stoppages and dead time.
Dillon is keen to beef up his game analysis team and they should start with rushed behinds.
There should always be a place for a defender to spoil the boil across the line in a marking contest. But the sight of defenders trying their best Denzel Washington impression, play-acting as they fumble and bumble the ball across the line to rush a point, is ridiculous.
Defenders should be forced to take risks to keep the ball in play by a more stringent rushed behind rule that encourages bold and brash play instead of being rewarded with a kick-out for the cost of only one point.
4. Explain yourself
Starting with making match review officer Michael Christian available every Monday to explain decisions. He has footy’s hardest job as he attempts to use a strict table of offences sorting football acts that often don’t fit that criteria.
Allowing him to explain those decisions can only bring the fans in on those challenges, and reinforce what the AFL is attempting to achieve.
The league has achieved a huge crackdown on head-high contact and the least it can do is properly explain why.
5. Don’t let up on the head-high crackdown
Well played to Sydney for their public campaign to free Dane Rampe for his collision with Lachie McNeil, but the tribunal decision was ridiculous.
So fans might ask if the tribunal crackdown is changing behaviour.
Those fans should watch five minutes of footy with an eye to the changing face of the tackle. Only 30 seconds after Ivan Soldo was dump-tackled by Ned Reeves (for a one-week suspension) he tackled James Sicily in front of goal. Soldo grabbed Sicily, spun him hard ... then let go of his arms.
He didn’t pin him in the tackle or dump him to ground because he knew he would be suspended if he did. We might not like the suspensions, but the results are clear to see.
Players mostly slow their force in a tackle to ensure there is no head-high contact.
They pin the arms but hold their opponent up. In short, the crackdown has worked.
6. Make the footy boss more available
People want clarity – on rule changes, on proposed mid-season drafts, on umpiring, on the kind of silly little quirks of the AFL that keep them up at night.
From memory, the last time the league’s interim football boss Laura Kane was on radio was explaining the Gabba lights catastrophe in March.
As usual, she performed with class and common sense.
Make Laura or the AFL GM of footy available once a month so the fans can get answers on footy’s big issues through the vehicle of the media.
The best way to get answers to AFL issues cannot be hoping 3AW’s Neil Mitchell asks the right questions when the AFL CEO fronts up for 10 minutes once a fortnight.
7. Trial one game in the pre-season next year with no prior opportunity
No one will ever have a comprehensive solution to holding the ball.
But watch a quarter on any given weekend and count how many times a player holds the ball in to his chest when he could dispose of it because it doesn’t advantage his team.
He is trying to waste time, or doesn’t have a teammate next to him or is near his own defensive goal – so he holds on to the ball aware he didn’t have prior opportunity and won’t be penalised.
Removing prior opportunity would change the face of the game – and not for the better.
But a trial of “no prior” – even at VFL level or in a pre-season scrimmage – would show the umpires than in the vast majority of cases, players are choosing to retain the ball in a tackle.
It might allow the league to police the current holding the ball rule with more vigour, and force players to get rid of the ball more readily in a tackle.
The sight of players frantically bashing the ball to pretend they are trying to release it is comical, but there has to be a way to “free” the footy more often from stoppages even when a player doesn’t have prior opportunity.
8. Make the fans believe in the illicit drugs policy
The league will broker a new deal with the AFLPA this year and the strong indication is there will be few changes to the current model.
Under the league’s illicit drugs code players receive a $5000 fine and counselling for a first strike and a four match-suspension and their name is made public for a second strike.
The problem is that policy intersects with the league’s medical model, which means players with serious issues are allowed to sidestep illicit drug testing, and in some cases continue to play footy.
Do we seriously believe since the new policy came in for the 2016 season not a single player has tested positive to illicit drugs twice?
That cynicism creates a situation that allowed people to wrongly believe Clayton Oliver might have a drugs strike when his hamstring issues dragged on because they have so little faith in the transparency of the illicit drugs code.
We don’t need to know how many positive strikes for first offences the league records each year – and the AFLPA won’t accept a code that makes those numbers public.
But the medical model should be better explained to the fans – in what circumstances can a player with a drug problem still play AFL? – and knowing how many players are tested each year would help with the public’s confidence.
9. Better media access to players
Make every player available in a 15-minute window post-match to detail their heroics and speak about the game’s issues if they see fit.
Only in extraordinary circumstances should they be able to decline.
The players are the true heroes of the game and are packed with insight, humour and perspective if we allow it to get out.
10. Fix the soft cap
The excuse to retain it at $7.2 million for 2024 is that footy was once an arms race where clubs like Collingwood frittered away money on altitude rooms, $100,000 part-time coaches and international pre-season camps.
All clubs want to do is pay their staff properly so they remain in the game while putting in 80-hour weeks.
There is a balance. Did anyone believe clubs were wasting millions of dollars of cash under the old soft cap in 2019 before Covid cuts?
Clubs believe Dillon will find that balance after brokering a CBA deal that will allow clubs to innovate without being spendthrifts.
11. Bring in a mid-season trade period
No one wants a mid-season trade period that lets the bottom-two clubs to hand off experienced players in a mid-year fire sale that allows contenders to stack their lists in June and win a flag.
It gives rise to tanking allegations. But Richmond has already won a flag with Marlion Pickett, who it picked up months earlier in the mid-season draft.
So go softly.
Allow mid-season trades under strict conditions that allow depth players to get greater opportunities.
The caveats might be that the AFL might have to agree to any trade, that clubs can only trade one player in or out, and those players have to be paid under $500,000 a season.
Then assess the results and gradually build out the mid-season trade period having assessed the unintended consequences.
12. Fix Mark and Goal of the Year
The mark and goal of the year awards are rubbish.
The fan voting element distorts the weekly nominations, meaning the league sometimes has to use its discretion with its official voting panel to shoehorn the year’s best mark into the final list of nominees.
The league’s website makes clear it has turned the event into a forum to maximise fan voting – fans can win as much as $5000 ($4000 cash and a $1000 rebel voucher for voting) – while the actual prize for the winner isn’t even listed.
In recent years it has been a package that includes the use of a car for a year.
13. Be wary of pick purchasing
The league is considering whether it will allow lowly clubs to secure early picks from contenders if they absorb another club’s salary cap room.
For example, Collingwood gives away pick 20 to North Melbourne to secure $700,000 of the Roos’ salary cap for the next season to spend on players.
Why wouldn’t bottom-four clubs want more flexibility to rebuild quickly if they can use spare salary cap room to secure first-round picks?
But consider the flip side – a club winning a flag when they had a million bucks of salary cap room more than their rival on grand final day.
The Jack Bowes salary dump that secured pick 7 for Geelong already made fans uneasy.
The league might put parameters in place to control pick purchasing.
While there are plenty of loopholes in the league’s so-called equalisation policies, a club having extra cap space and winning a flag has whiskers on it.
14. Dillon wants to turbo-charge the national draft
Here is the problem – we don’t see enough of the kids.
Chris Cavanagh’s Phantom drafts and rankings are widely read, but there’s a lack of access to footage out there to watch the players we are reading about.
The league has vision of every kick, mark and handball for the Under-18 kids across the season.
But right now it often leaves the distribution of highlights to outsider providers like Baseline and Footy Stuff, who film and put clips on YouTube.
If the league wants to build hype it should have readily available highlights clips of every player accessible to all media – social and mainstream – across the entire year.
So by the time we come to the national draft fans have seen enough of future stars.
15. Stop the nonsense over the secret herbs and spices of free agency compensation
Make it transparent.
Clubs already rort or take advantage of the system.
What is the problem with Essendon knowing what it would need to trigger first-round compo for North Melbourne if the Dons secured Ben McKay?
It’s probably $750,000 over three years, but does it matter if they know the exact figure?
The Dons pulled off a convenient deal with Brisbane which allowed Joe Daniher to depart for exactly the sum which would trigger a first-round pick.
Take the guesswork out of it.
16. Try a wildcard weekend
Make it a single game – eighth versus ninth.
Worst that can happen? Ninth wins the flag? Unlikely.
But we get a one-week sample size that might be glorious and surprising and incredible.
If it’s terrible, the AFL drops it and we never talk about it again.
17. Make Dillon’s wage public again
It is an important reference point compared to the AFL’s top players in an era when the suspicion is Gillon McLachlan’s salary tripled the league’s highest-paid players.
It would be a sign of his desire to be accountable and transparent to the industry.
He could deflect and say the decision is for the AFL commission boss.
But he could make it happen and it would be an important sign of his determination to introduce a new era where the AFL is truly accountable to its fans and clubs.
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Originally published as Wreck it Ralph: 17 changes new AFL CEO Andrew Dillon can make to help change the game
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