Bollocks.

According to Kennett, 5% of the Hawthorn Football Club’s revenue comes from pokies, and precommitment technology would cut that revenue 40%. This would amount therefore amount to a 2% revenue cut, or about $800,000 per year. I’ve had a look through several club annual reports, including the known struggling clubs. I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that those clubs earn significantly more gambling money than Hawthorn.

The AFL salary cap is currently about 8 million dollars a year, or about $177,000 per senior player per year. If the revenue hit was dealt with entirely by reducing player payments, this would amount to a average pay cut of approximately $17,000 per year, leaving an average salary of about $160,000. Does anybody seriously think that AFL clubs would suddenly find themselves unable to attract players if they only paid their players $160,000 per year? Or, for that matter, $100,000?

Yes, player payments by clubs are largely fixed through the salary cap. But the salary cap is something entirely within the discretion of the AFL Commission, in negotiations with the players, to fix.

The AFL will survive just fine without pokies or sports betting. It’s a question of whether AFL players, coaches, and managers are merely very well-paid, or extremely well-paid. But, on past history, clubs will continue to fight for their right to get revenue from socially destructive industries, such as tobacco and booze.

For those of you from the rugby states who haven’t been following this rather embarrassing saga, Ben Cousins is one of the most talented AFL footballers of the modern era. As a midfielder with the West Coast Eagles, he captained the side from 2001 to 2005, won the Brownlow medal in 2005, won his club’s best and fairest award four times (in a team that also included Chris Judd, amongst other champion players), and played in two Grand Finals, with a win in 2006. Cousins, however, has a taste for mind-altering substances of various kinds, legal and illegal. He’s also had friendships with a number of Perth’s more colourful “underworld identities”; as summarized here. He was sacked by the Eagles in 2007, after being arrested by police driving driving around “erratically” with various prescription tranquilizers and – wait for it – Viagra – in his car. He was then deregistered by the AFL for 12 months, after an apparent cocaine binge while supposedly seeking rehabilitation in Los Angeles.

After lengthy debates on whether the AFL would let Cousins play again, the imposition of an onerous testing drug testing regime, and Brisbane, St. Kilda and Collingwood all considering drafting Cousins before dipping out. It seems that, in most cases, the footballing staff were keen, the club management decided that it would antagonize sponsors too much. Richmond, it seems, are prepared to take the risk of sponsor opprobrium, to pick up a proven champion, still potentially near his peak, for virtually nothing.

Frankly, the whole circus has been rather embarrassing. Ben Cousins is a grade-A doofus, granted. But – with the exception of a 2001 incident where he got into a fistfight with a teammate about that teammate’s relationship with his cousin – any harm caused by Cousins has been to himself, not to anyone else. He didn’t take performance-enhancing drugs. He didn’t abuse women. By driving under the influence of drugs, he put other people at risk, but any number of other AFL players have done that. But three AFL clubs refused to take him, and a fourth, desperate for success, has seemingly only done so because fans have clamoured for it.

Aside from the image concerns of sponsors, the reluctance to touch Cousins probably has a bit to do with the internal culture of footy clubs. AFL clubs are full of boys still in, or just out of their teens, with more money and spare time than they know what to do with, and fans treating them like gods. So, despite the PR guff, in my (limited, admittedly, but direct) experience, they behave like it’s summer camp with no supervision. In that situation, an older player like Cousins, particularly if he comes back and plays well while still powdering his nose and hanging round with the local mobsters, could easily lead a whole bunch of the younger draftees down the same track. And while freaks like Cousins might be able to play at the highest level while maintaining a taste for Bolivian nose candy, it’s not so clear that the mere mortals who round out the lists of footy clubs can do so.

But, more than that, it comes down to the fact that the AFL likes to promote its players as moral exemplars, rather than just people who are talented at moving an oval piece of leather from one end of a grass-covered field to another. This, despite repeated examples that exceptional footballing talent has essentially no correlation at all with moral rectitude. Frankly, the sooner we all collectively get over that particular delusion, the better.

It’s worth considering, for a moment, just how successful their home-and-away season campaigns have been, and comparing them to other dominant teams of the recent past – an exercise made easy by finalsiren.com’s historical result listings. Geelong’s home-and-away season performance has been considerably better than last year, winning 21 of a possible 22 games, and with a percentage of 160 (that is, they have scored 1.6 times as many points as their opponents over the course of the season). Statistically, it is a (marginally) better home-and-away season than Essendon’s 2000 season, and well in front of any other team’s home-and-away record. Over a two-year period, Geelong’s home-and-away win-loss record in 2007-08 equals Essendon’s 1999-2000 record, and their overall percentage is considerably higher – they have won as many games, but by bigger margins. While some other teams have enjoyed longer periods of success – Essendon topped the ladder again in 2001 – Geelong have been as dominant in regular games over the past two years as any team we’ve seen (note: with the exception of the 1929 Collingwood team)

Given that the AFL draft and salary cap is supposed to even out the competition, it is interesting that two of the most statistically dominant teams seen – the Essendon team of 1999-2001, and the present Geelong team – have played in the last decade under this structure. Throw in Brisbane’s three consecutive premierships of 2001-03, and – while no team has managed continuous domination of the kind that the Melbourne Demons managed through the late 1950s – you start to get a picture that the current structure might just be leading to single, dominant teams more than one would expect.

So why is this the case? I don’t know, but there’s a few possibilities that come to mind. The idea of a “rebuilding a team” over a period of years has always been present, but I doubt it’s ever had the prominence that it’s had now. The details of the salary cap make it impossible to hoard money to shell out on star players when they become available; unlike soccer, it’s not possible to buy players from outside the competition to quickly improve a team. The only way for mediocre AFL teams to become competitive is to be patient, accumulating the best available young players in the annual draft, hopefully to all peak around the same time to put them in contention for a premiership. While they are not ready to contend for a premiership, the incentives for a team to win are limited to pleasing fans and sponsors; their chances of collecting potential stars in the draft is hurt by winning too many games. So my guess is that, particularly late in the season, coaches of “rebuilding teams” – while not explicitly “tanking” – may well be treating matches as primarily training and experimentation opportunities with the younger players who will have a chance to contend for premierships. This may lead to top teams winning more of these matches than would have taken place in the past.

But even if that theory is true, it doesn’t entirely explain the dominance of single teams. Any thoughts? Just random chance, or is there something more systematic going on?