Graham Cornes: Time for AFL players to join the real world as COVID-19 crisis escalates
Troubled times call for sacrifices from everyone who is able – and highly paid, privileged AFL players should be among the first to put their hands up, writes Graham Cornes.
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Welcome to the real world of 2020 boys! As hard as it may be to believe, there is no money. Last night you got 50 per cent of your pay packet until May 31 and you will still keep 30 per cent of your income even if no more footy is played in the 2020 season.
Those reputations that you have built as fine young men – benevolent citizens who are prepared to make sacrifices to aid those less fortunate, are being trashed.
Stop complaining and stop looking for compromise. Our country faces the biggest financial and medical crisis in over 100 years and you still have a job.
Stop carrying on like union bovver boys. Maybe you won’t be able to earn that average wage of $362,471 but at least there will be some money coming in.
Have you checked with your coaches and assistant coaches in the last couple of days? Most of them have been laid off. There is no offer of 30 per cent of salary. They’ve been cut off with no income.
Worse, there is no guarantee of a job if things ever get back to something resembling normality.
Good people who have never been unemployed, are being told to register with Centrelink.
To be fair, not every AFL player earns that sort of money, but you get the picture.
More specifically, 30 per cent of something is better than 100 per cent of nothing. Besides, they’ve already had five months of their contract-year on full pay.
The biggest problem is that most of us in this 21st century have been spoiled.
Certainly our kids have been. Nearly every kid aged 10 or over seems to have a mobile device, demands, and usually gets, every new gadget that appears.
Families have three televisions in the house and three cars in the garage. The expectations of newlyweds, for instance are so much greater than those of their parents and certainly their grand parents.
AFL footballers certainly have been spoiled. They’ve been stars through the junior ranks, been drafted straight out of school and have immediately earned salaries that take university graduates years to emulate.
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They are generally fine citizens but in this matter their moral compass is askew.
Admittedly it is frightening to have your salary slashed but if you’re not playing games of football, there is no money coming in. However, they have not been left with nothing like so many others.
Australia has had tough times before but very few of us were there to experience them. The Great Depression, which was triggered by an unprecedented stock market collapse, began in 1929. It lasted for most of the 1930s and unemployment reached 30 per cent.
But football didn’t stop. In fact, along with the emergence of a young cricket maestro named Bradman and a fabulous racehorse called Phar Lap, football provided entertainment and relief from the crushing, soul destroying scourge of abject poverty.
At Victoria Park, home of the dominant team of the era, Collingwood (they had won four premierships in a row), the unemployed were granted free admission. Their legendary coach Jock McHale combined his coaching job with employment at the Carlton Brewery – one of the few industries that didn’t lay workers off.
My father used to tell me stories from the Great Depression. He told of the hordes of unemployed men (they were always men), desperate to feed their families but somehow could still afford a beer.
The wives wracked with poverty were left with the burden of feeding and clothing too many kids.
Stories of the swagmen who “humped their blueys” all over the land, from farm to farm, station to station, looking for work, sounded romantic till one day I actually saw one tramping along a country road with his world’s possession’s strapped to his back.
Dad told of basic, poverty meals like bread and dripping (the solidified juices and fats from a baking dish), a taste for which he never lost.
They are times that we should never see again but who can guess just how quickly our economy and football can recover from this crisis.
On Thursday, chief executive Gillon McLachlan, wrote to each of Australian Football’s Hall of Fame inductees, and the AFL life members explaining the predicament of the AFL.
The major concern is not just the future of the 18 AFL clubs but also how to protect the game at all levels, he wrote.
All other competitions have been halted and only the AFL players have been offered any salary.
He is still optimistic that the season can recommence on May 31 and the remaining 144 games (plus finals) can be completed.
One can only hope his confidence is justified. However, despite his assurances, the dilemma of clubs from the minor leagues like the SANFL or WAFL seems largely ignored.
Suburban and country clubs will be hit hard but they re not quite so reliant on full-time employees and multimillion-dollar broadcast deals.
In fact, the chances of country and community teams rebounding quickly are much greater given the community spirit and charitable nature of the volunteers who drive those clubs.
Long-time player manager and lawyer, Peter Jess, always a pugnacious provocateur waded into the debate yesterday.
“We can’t have troops on the front line and generals in the bunker”, he said. It was a blatant reference to the 10 highly paid executives still on duty at AFL House.
Gillon has offered to match the players’ pay-cut but it seems improbable that the AFL can maintain its full executive staff.
Jess also made the point that every good organisation has provision for a 100-year disaster event, which the AFL does not. Good point.
They’ll still be talking about this crisis in a hundred years. Hopefully they’ll also talk about the sacrifice that the AFL players made and not their reluctance to do so.
Originally published as Graham Cornes: Time for AFL players to join the real world as COVID-19 crisis escalates