Mark Robinson: Can the AFL stop North Melbourne tanking for Harley Reid?
Is a loss more valuable than a win this weekend? MARK ROBINSON argues that it is time to a have the dark conversation about tanking in the AFL.
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The AFL’s integrity has taken a lashing in recent weeks and, once again, it’s on watch at Hobart on Saturday.
It’s called tanking.
Let’s have the dark discussion.
The scenario on Saturday is:
* If North Melbourne beats Gold Coast it will miss out on Harley Reid – as long as West Coast loses at home to Adelaide.
* If the Kangaroos lose, they will finish last. North will then have draft pick No. 1 and either trade it or keep it and select Reid.
It’s a simple, yet murky, equation.
North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson is in a totally unfair and compromised position.
Does a loss help his team more than a win help the team?
That’s not a sleight on Clarkson. It’s the system at play and it’s the logical question to ask.
Fans are divided. Does one win late in a ramshackle season do wonders for morale and culture, or does a loss equally do wonders for morale because they will have dibs on the most hyped No. 1 of all time?
The media will scrutinise the Suns-Kangas game within an inch of its life. TV commentators will note positional changes, time on interchange, game modes and defensive plans.
Players will try, they always do. If there’s tanking, it will be subtle.
The Fox Footy team covering the match is Dwayne Russell, Cameron Mooney, Brad Johnson and Ben Dixon. They have a responsibility to call it as the see it.
The AFL should be equally as vigilant.
The problem is the AFL hasn’t got a sheriff in town. There’s no head of football, so who is going to decide if Clarkson and his coaching team have manipulated the result, if in fact they go down that path?
Laura Kane is the acting footy boss. It’s her responsibility to ensure the integrity of the competition is paramount, so this game has to be monitored by the league.
Red flags can’t pop up. If odd moves are made, they need to be at least questioned, even investigated.
Then again, should a coach be questioned for experimenting with players in different positions?
Of course, the AFL’s belief is that every player and every team and every coach every week endeavours to win the game of football.
But we know that’s not true.
Melbourne. Carlton. Collingwood. They were all accused of manipulating results in the past to gain an advantage on draft night. Priority picks were the lure. Don’t win more than five games and bob’s your uncle.
Take the Magpies, as one example. In 2005, the Pies were three goals ahead of North Melbourne late in the final quarter, they didn’t make any obvious moves to close down the game and North kicked the last four goals of the game to win.
The next weekend, Collingwood played Carlton. It was reported by Nine’s Greg Baum that “in the second quarter, Nathan Buckley kicked three goals to square the match. In the third, Buckley was sent to full-forward, and stood there, marooned and doing hamstring stretches, as Carlton kicked nine goals in a row to romp away with the match’’.
Demons coach Dean Bailey actually admitted he was asked to not win games. The AFL, who had its head in the sand for years over tanking, finally took a stand. The league fined Melbourne $500,000 and banned Bailey for 16 weeks, and footy boss Chris Connolly for a time.
The Demons were not guilty of tanking mind you. They were just “guilty’’.
Bailey and Connolly received suspensions for their involvement for acting in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the AFL.
Gillon McLachlan responds to the explosive report on Melbourne and tanking. pic.twitter.com/YWDRPXLfDh
— 3AW Football (@3AWisfootball) April 4, 2019
It was about this time AFL boss Gillon McLachlan made one of his most famous comments. “I don’t know what the definition of tanking is’’, he said in 2013.
The league has been under siege these past two weeks.
The whimsical nature of footy meant that when Jeremy Cameron was out of bounds, you could sort of smirk and say it was a mistake and move on.
The goal umpiring error at Adelaide Oval last weekend was no smirking matter. The goal wasn’t paid, the field umpires didn’t intervene, the ARC wasn’t called upon, and the make up of the eight was compromised. It was an integrity cluster.
Saturday, and like it or not, tanking will be on the agenda.
Complicating this weekend is the fact Geelong stands accused of putting the needs of next year ahead of the needs of this weekend. They will field a weakened team against the Bulldogs. Would it be the same if they were trying to play finals?
The Giants will be bleating. They need the Cats to beat the Dogs to ensure a finals spot. If the Dogs win, then they will need to beat Carlton on Sunday.
Look at Richmond. Jack Riewoldt and Trent Cotchin are not playing this weekend. If the Tigers were in line to play finals, they’d be playing. So would Jack Ziebell if he and North were in the same situation.
It’s a world sport problem. In the NBA, teams warehouse their star players all the time.
Former Richmond coach Terry Wallace once said he felt “compromised’’ in the final round of the 2007 season when his team played the Saints. The scenario centred on Matthew Kreuzer and Trent Cotchin.
The Richmond-St Kilda game was played the day before the infamous ‘Kreuzer Cup’ between Melbourne and Carlton, which the Blues lost and received a priority pick and which they used to secure Kreuzer.
The Tigers also lost which secured them Cotchin, their future premiership captain.
“It’s the first time in 30 years where I’ve been involved in football as a player or a coach where I’ve felt compromised doing my job,” Wallace said at the time.
“That was the last round of 2007 and I thought the integrity of the game was threatened at that stage.
“And we’ve just got to do something about it. We’ve got to fix it.”
By fixing it, Wallace is in favour of a lottery system, where every club who misses the finals has at least one ball in the lottery which decides the draft order.
“What happens if we get a kid, who comes through the under-18 championships next year and he kicks 14 goals in every single game he plays, he’s six-foot-seven and he’s the greatest thing we’ve ever seen arrive in the land?’’ Wallace told AFL 360 back then.
“At the moment we have a situation where teams can actually work themselves into that situation to pick up that player.
“Why don’t we just take it out of the equation? Why don’t we put in a lottery system where you don’t know so it’s not even a question.”
Clarkson, however, is not convinced the lottery system would work. At his press conference on Thursday, he said it had “hairs on it’’ and didn’t elaborate.
Instead, he fired shots at the AFL over Gold Coast’s assistance packages, and at others criticising North Melbourne’s attempt to get draft assistance.
There was nothing about tanking.
What an intriguing match it will be because it’s better for North to lose the game than to win it.
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