AFLPA president Patrick Dangerfield has key role in AFL season reboot

Patrick Dangerfield’s homecoming to Geelong in 2016 was greeted with great fanfare but also a touch of the absurd.

Carlton’s Jack Newnes and Kade Simpson train in Melbourne on Thursday in preparation for the expected restart of the AFL season. Picture: AAP

Patrick Dangerfield’s homecoming to Geelong in 2016 was greeted with great fanfare but also a touch of the absurd.

As part of an advertising campaign for Fox Footy, the Cats champion suited up for a surf near his home in Moggs Creek. But instead of the thick wetsuit usually required for Victoria’s oceans in winter, Dangerfield was sporting jacket and tie.

“Anyone who said you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure was in the wrong business,” he said.

But the COVID-19 crisis has meant precious little pleasure in the business of footy over the past couple of months for Dangerfield, the president of the AFL Players Association who has been heavily involved in negotiations on a couple of significant fronts.

The father-of-two lives in a hamlet on the Victorian surf coast but when issues such as the use of hubs have flared, his gaze has been firmly fixed on the laptop.

While Carlton’s Kade Simpson and Jack Newnes were among the footballers working out on a wintry day in Melbourne on Thursday, Dangerfield was busy in his union job.

“It takes up time at different stages. Clearly we are in a little bit of a busy period at the moment,” he said.

“After the initial decision to cull the season, to postpone it, there was some time where, like everyone, where you have some down time at home and then it ramps up back up once there is a proposal put forward.

“It is what it is. You have to adapt to what we can. This is what we are doing as an organisation to best cater for our players. It is not ideal but no one is in their ideal scenario or situation at the ­moment.”

Geelong star and AFLPA president Patrick Dangerfield. Picture: AAP

As the face of the players’ union, Dangerfield bore the brunt of criticism as the union attempted to reach an agreement with the league on the wage cuts footballers were prepared to accept during the season suspension.

Along with the AFLPA’s chief executive Paul Marsh, Dangerfield is now leading negotiations surrounding a return to play with the AFL, with tensions ramped up after the bombshell suggestion footballers, in a worst-case scenario, would need to spend up to 21 weeks in quarantined hubs.

Some of the discussion has been derisive of the reaction of the players, suggesting they are coddled and unwilling to make ­sacrifices.

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire, who is a member of the league’s “coronavirus cabinet”, has led the charge against the way in which the AFLPA briefed the players.

“It is not really something that you can control. We deal with the facts we are given from the AFL and we update the players accordingly,” Dangerfield said.

“There is no point getting the facts and then giving a wishy-washy version of what could happen if everything goes well.

“I don’t think Marshy is losing too much sleep at night about some of the comments.”

Dangerfield, a father of two, was initially against the idea of hubs when the concept was raised as a possible way of restarting the season.

His stance softened as more information became available in regards to how hubs would be deployed and what the economic implications for the game would be.

Dangerfield is happy to forgo taking his family into a hub, but said every footballer had different issues to deal with.

“Everyone is going to have different family situations they are in,” he said.

“If rules are relaxed, I am lucky my family would have family support around them. But that is not the case for a lot of players.”