Re: AFLW announce 'conferences' for 2019
Reply #25 –
If you mess with the player system then you create the problem of making it difficult for weaker teams to advance. What happens now in the EPL if a quality player finds himself in a relegated team?
Thats the thing. In the EPL, a quality player who plays for a relegated team, whether in contract or not is able to be purchased by another team. They don't have salary caps, and they have the ability to transfer players during transfer windows that open and shut. If we go towards this model, we will need to overhaul how players are able to move in the AFL and that generally will mean that we end up at free agency (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
I was a bit tongue in cheek when I took up your EPL idea. Having thought about it though, it wouldn't be the same as EPL.
With 10 teams per division, rather than 20, interest in Division 2 would only be marginally less than Division 1 because with smaller divisions than the EPL have teams would be moving back and forth regularly.
Rusted on fans of Carlton, St Kilda, Adelaide etc would still be a passionate. Coverage of games wouldn't change much with the addition of two extra sides. Add the extra consideration that your team has a 20% chance of dropping or advancing to another division. It adds a bit of excitement to the end of the season. You certainly wouldn't get a lot of tanking.
I don't know. What would be the advantages of being in Division 1. Premiership prestige? Maybe we're getting back to a Conference system rather than a Division system. Ideally a reduction in sides to around 14 that allows for a complete Home/Away fixture may be the simplest and fairest way to resolve any advantage /disadvantage.
Players will always want to play at the "top level".
Conferences and the like have scope to end up with a bastardised tier competition (we may already be seeing that a little bit with the current player movement).
Everyone wants to win a flag, and everyone wants to play for a premiership contender, and will do so for less money because money will pay the bills, but sports are sports. Ultimately, you play them to win and the money differences are not big enough to be a money hunter.
i.e. Base wages are about 100k mark. Play 20 games a year at roughly 5 grand a game, and you are set to earn 200k a year minimum. Your cost of living expenses are pretty low, as the club provides a lot of gear, flights, food, medical expenses, etc. Anything over an above this, for even 5 years, means pocketing a million dollars plus in wages.
The average joe in the street will see 1 million in wages over 10-15 years minimum. Not 5. All whilst still able to gain an education that will see them able to have a profesional career post footy in pretty much any profession of choice, and half the time if they stay involved in footy as coaches, or "consulting" they will still earn over and above your average person in the street.
The carrots are simply not great enough to sacrifice success for money, unless you get paid an exhorbitantly high figure, and even then, you might find that players will still sacrifice the big $$ for a work life balance, that will yield them a half decent shot at a flag.
This is why free agency as it currently operates is seeing players jump from bad clubs to good clubs at fairly high wages, and by the looks of things, free agents arent flowing the other way, and its actually a mechanism being used to keep average contracts of players down.
"Accept less dollars, and we can attract better free agents".