Fwee Agency: A 4th, 5th & 6th Way to Pay Gary

For the four-plus years Mrs Watson and I have been writing this blog, we’ve done our best to stay away from the administrative side of the game. You know, the uninteresting, politicking, largely irrelevant side of the AFL, otherwise known as “Caroline Wilson’s paycheque”.

But with the introduction of free agency, the looming spectre of two new clubs and Don Costa’s staggering admission that, “Yes, I pay Gary Junior an enormous wage outside the salary cap and the AFL are ok with it because I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse”, I thought I was due.

As recently as a couple of years ago the AFL were against free agency but the Mexican stand-off type situations we’ve seen at trade week probably changed their mind. Well, that or a quiet strike threat by players association. But at least they’ve done their due diligence: Adrian Anderson apparently spent time with administrators from all the major US sports and sought their input on free agency and what works with their particular models. Accordingly, what the AFL has come up with is a fairly conservative, restricted, mash-up.

Without going into too much detail, the basics are thus: Taking effect in 2012, uncontracted players become eligible for free agency after eight years service at one club. However, if a player is amongst his club’s top 10 in terms of existing salary, the club gets a chance to match any outside offer. Players with 10 years service are unrestricted.

So, for example, if the rules were currently in place, Gary Ablett Junior, drafted in 2001, would have become a restricted free agent in 2009. Meaning, had he been out of contract, other teams could offer him a contract that, considering he would be one of Geelong’s highest paid, The Cats would have been given the chance to match. Also, and importantly, the AFL has said they will compensate the club of any lost restricted free agent with draft picks. Where these picks fall is yet to be determined. So, continuing our Ablett example, if he signed with Essendon in 2009, The Cats would firstly be able to match their offer, and if they chose not to, or couldn’t due to cap constraints, Geelong would be given an extra draft choice. If the same contract was offered to Ablett in 2011, after 10 years of service to the one club, The Cats would have no right to match and Gary would be free to walk without any compensation for Geelong. We clear? Good. Lucky I prefaced that with “without going into too much detail”. Right now I have the feeling you’re staring at your screens like I just made you sit through ‘Mullholland Drive’ again.

At first glance this looks to be tailored towards players at the end of their careers who want one more chance at a premiership. Not only the guys like Barry Hall, who had to fight to be traded where he wanted to go, but someone like Nathan Brown who retired last year essentially because Richmond couldn’t work out a trade for him. Imagine if Geelong were able to throw the minimum salary at him and say, “stop making those awful t-shirts, play out of the goal square and if you kick 40 goals this year we’ll have another flag”. I mean, everyone’s excited about Podsiadly (who will now be referred to as P.O.D.) but you’re telling me Nathan Brown wouldn’t do a better job as Geelong’s third forward? The same could probably be said about Matthew Lloyd, or Scott Lucas, or, dare I say it, Richo. It’s a neat way of giving veterans a chance to control the later stage of their career and give contending teams a chance to roll the dice. Plus, it would save me from being briefly hypnotised every time Channel 7 cut to a crouching, slack-jawed, sideline-reporting Matthew Richardson and his adventures in Fitzroy hair-dressing. What this also does, however, is make salary cap management the most important aspect of running an AFL club: If you think Freo’s constant recruiting of Essendon’s over-35s is atrocious, just wait til they get the chance to open up the cheque book. They’ll go broke quicker than the Leyland Brothers. (And yes, I realise that’s a 20-year old pop culture reference. Just kill me now.)

I’m a huge NBA fan and there’s quite an odd thing happening over there at the moment. With an excellent free agent class looming (by the way, get used to the phrase “free agent class”) teams have, for two years now in some cases, been juggling their player lists and salary cap in such a way as to have the most amount of money available come the end of this season to throw at these free agents. Some teams, most notably the New York Knicks, have essentially dogged two seasons on a probably 50/50 shot at landing one excellent player. Now, football and basketball are very different sports; most notably, one player can make all the difference on the basketball court, considering that only five guys get to play at once, but are there some lessons to be learned? The Knicks have taken an 18-month dump on their fans for the promise of this off-season but what happens if they don’t manage to land one of the big fish?

Bringing it back to the AFL, we have another added wrinkle to consider; two new teams set to join the league, both of which are not only being given an absurdly generous amount of draft concessions but are also being financially subsidised by the league itself; you know, the very same league whose job it is to ensure a fair and even playing field for all teams. Now, I understand the AFL sees expansion as the key to a thriving, healthy, truly national sport, and I understand that they’re also is keen to protect their investment, but how involved will they be? What if a senile Kevin Sheedy decides to offer a 30-year old Mathew Stokes $1.5 million and part ownership in a Blacktown meth-lab? Would the AFL step in to “protect its investment”? (There it is; my first official Mathew Stokes joke!)

Considering the draft age of most AFL players is 17 or 18, after eight years service the restricted free agents will be 25 or 26 year-old players in their absolute prime. As I mentioned in the earlier Ablett scenario, Junior’s eight years were up in 2009, the same season he won the Brownlow medal. Matthew Scarlett would have been eligible in 2005, the first year of his five consecutive All-Australian selections. So if you’re an up-coming club with a developing young list but a couple of major holes, what’s stopping you driving a dump-truck full of money to a 25-year old Joel Selwood’s front door? Especially if it’s someone who is as salary cap stretched as the Cats? According to Frank Costa, only the illusion of a legitimate business interest. And this, really, is the biggest problem free agency poses to the AFL.

As mentioned in the opening, Frank openly admitted that Gary Junior is paid to do promotional and marketing work for Costa’s coastal property development business and that this has been cleared by the AFL. And as we all now, Chris Judd holds some mystery position with VISY, the late, former Carlton president Dick Pratt’s company. Is Luke Ball earning an extra 100K as Eddie McGuire’s gardener? How about Footy Show appearances? I’m all for players finding other revenue streams given that most careers are fairly short, but isn’t this a clear conflict of interest? It’s not the extra work as such; it’s that it potentially lowers the player’s salary cap number. Any property development group in the greater Geelong region love to have Ablett in for a few client meet & greets but only one is paying over the odds with his right hand and under with his left.

The AFL is so profitable now that TV rights are larger than New Zealand’s GDP and all players, plus innumerable support staff, are afforded the wages to be full-time footballers. As recently as the early 1990s AFL clubs weren’t producing enough revenue to pay all players to be full-time, so, accordingly, players still carried second jobs. Gary Ablett Senior was a courier. Gavin Excel went door-to-door selling memberships. And one day Gary Hocking collected my rubbish bins, parked at the top of our court, and then proceeding to spend the next 25 minutes spiralling empty Fanta bottles into the back of the truck from 30 yards. I’m pretty sure he was getting paid by the hour. But I digress.

My point is that player payments outside of the football club are nothing new. It has been happening for decades, as either a cushy job organised by the club, or a brown paper bag of unmarked, non-sequential bills left on the bar at The Valley Inn. And mostly it has been a way for semi-professional clubs to reward long-term stars, because, let’s face it, there’s no other way they could afford to buy cocaine for their friends. But couple it with free agency, league expansion, draft concessions and the AFL propping up clubs financially and now it becomes a critical, albeit shady, component of on field success.

Eat your heart out, Caro.