Round 7, 2009

 

 

In football news this week:

• Geelong notched up number 7 and Matthew Scarlett sent Big Bad Barry one step closer to retirement;

• St Kilda ripped apart a team in black and white whose president fancied themselves as premiership contenders;

• The Roos did their best to to throw away a four goal lead late in the game, but Port Adelaide once again showed that nobody, but nobody, can out-do the Power when it comes to failing to win winnable games;

• The void in violent and psychotic sporting behaviour that has been created by the meek surrender of the Tigerban is being admirably filled by Damir Dokic; 

• After targeting Terry Wallace and Dean Laidley in successive weeks, Caroline Wilson has now turned her attention to Mick Malthouse in her latest Glenn Milne attempt to bring about coaching regime change from her keyboard.

Hawthorn Bandwagon, 2008 Grand Final:

 

 

Hawthorn Bandwagon, Round 7 2009:

 

 

Are the Hawks gorn? After 7 rounds and 4 losses it looks like Hawthorn have become the football equivalent of Harold Holt's Prime Ministership - rose spectacularly to the top job only to (quite literally) sink without trace less than a year later. Perhaps the confused bogan from Camberwell (do they have bogans in Camberwell? Maybe he's from Ashburton instead) was hitching a ride on the train to a beach house at Portsea opposite Cheviot beach.

 

It was a sad sight for the Hawks on Friday night. Captain Mitchell has his worst game in years, Roughead went from 8-goal hero to feeling like the silliest redhead since Cameron Ling filled out his liquor licence application, and supposedly fearsome warriors such as Campbell Brown were getting burned off and sat on by skinny 20 year-olds.

 

 

Crows poor dcision making - on and off the field

 

Neil Craig, the man who has prided himself on over-engineering a precision regiment of Crowbots, has suddenly decided to completely ditch his game plan and embark on a new one. This may present certain problems for the Crowbots, who have been so programmed to play in the uncreative, predictable Craig style that the ability for lateral thinking has now been eliminated. It was always a mistake for Craig to stifle the inherent free-spirited South Australian ethos and style of his team and attempt to put them in a tactical straight jacket, where freedom for free spirits was sacrilege. Having spent the last two seasons trying to de-South Australianise South Australia and now realising he has failed miserably, perhaps Caro can turn her attention to Craig once she moves on to her next hapless coach.

 

But the Crows poor decision-making is not limited to on-field issues, as reported in the Adelaide Advertiser this week:

 

Sportstars burned in million-dollar fraud

 

WAYNE Carey, Mark Ricciuto and a host of AFL household names were among those duped of millions of dollars in what is believed to be Australia's greatest fraud, a new book has revealed.

 

The high-profile victims traded fictitious shares in an Adelaide company which claimed to have invented a revolutionary additive pill for fuel.

 

The man who orchestrated the fraud was Tim Johnston... Johnston collected up to $100 million from investors over a period of two years, but his company had only sold $40 worth of product.

 

Wayne Carey, the former All-Australian AFL captain, invested $100,000, his father, Kevin Carey, invested $60,000, and the then-captain of the Adelaide Crows, Mark Ricciuto, put in $175,000 in two parcels Ryle wrote. Crows coach Neil Craig and his wife put in $30,000.

Surely someone must have smelt a little rate here. An ‘Australian’ company, based in the Virgin Islands, offering a little pill that promises huge fuel consumption savings and emission reductions? The spiv Tim Johnston certainly went after the bright sparks of Adelaide when seeking investors.

 

 

But this wasn't the only wool that Johnston tried to pull over the eyes of the Crows:

 

The Crows were also caught up in the scam, after Johnston promised to generate thousands of dollars for the club by selling fuel-additive pills and donating some of his profits.

 

"One of Firepower's plans had been to market a brand of pills through the Adelaide Crows -- using images of players like they did at the Western Force -- where each packet of pills sold would provide $1 to the Crows Foundation. The money generated from this, in turn, would fund the transfer of players but whether this was real or imagined is hard to tell.

 

One player was Fremantle captain Matthew Pavlich, whose name was found in a series of Johnston's emails which detail a sponsorship arrangement with Firepower.

It is indeed a sad day when a proud football club (and a South Australian one at that) falls victim to the snake oil sales pitch of a blow-in spiv offering easy riches and on-field success. But, alas, football has a long and lamentable history of such incidents, which, not surprisingly, reached their peak in the 1980s boom. As an addition to the authoritative historical record, and as a warning to other clubs that may be tempted with seduction by smooth-talking fast buck types, Football Invective.com hereby presents its Letterman-style Top 10 spivs to infiltrate football:

 

1. Geoffrey Edelston - When he wasn't hiring Christopher Flannery to beat up former patients, Edelston was the 'owner' of the licence for the Swans. Whilst a supposed 'independent review' of Edelston by the VFL concluded that "Dr Edelston has the capacity to fund the proposed financial commitments", Edelston confessed to other members of his consortium on the day it received the licence that "I don't have a dime. So now we have to go out there tomorrow and find someone with the dough." So instead he co-opted some Perth spivs to actually put in the money on his behalf, with the league not actually knowing who the real owners were. A spiv with money is one thing, but a spiv with no money is something else entirely.

 

Spivs and champagne in Spiv City

 

2. Christopher Skase - Burned $19 million of other people's money on the Brisbane Bears before it all went pear-shaped and Majorca beckoned.

 

 

3. Reuben Pelerman - Pelerman out-Skased even Skase, burning $5 million of his own money on the Bears. Later he would confess that "I only bought the team to keep them out of trouble, to keep them on the Gold Coast, to give the boys a job. To be frank, I felt they conned me into it." Surely a Skase or Pelerman couldn't happen again in football? Well, it was back in the day when, due to tough economic times, the league was prepared to embrace ego-driven spivs to prop up struggling franchises in the Gold Coast and Sydney markets. Who says history won't repeat?

 

 

4. Ranald McDonald - Took over the Collingwood board with his 'New Magpies' ticket in 1982. The campaign for the 'New Magpies' described him as having 'style, fame and media access'. Perhaps he should have just had "SPIV" tattooed on his forehead instead. By 1986 the club was down the financial gurgler and McDonald 'resigned' before he was involuntarily purged by the feral Magpie hordes. 

 

5. Allan McAllister - It's often forgotten that McAllister was part of the original 'New Magpies' ticket, and McDonald's board, but (like 90% of the club's playing list that year) an otherwise mediocre record was redeemed by vicarious association with the most ordinary premiership team ever in 1990. But the success when to Big Al's head - who could ever forget his grand plan to buy up all the houses around Victoria Park to turn the area into a "Maggie Land" amusement park, only for them to be subsequently flogged off at great loss to the club.

 

6. Alan Bond - Served a brief (and horrific) stint as President of beleagured Richmond in 1986 which was notable for not much else besides not knowing the name of the team captain (Dale Whiteman) and then telling another club gathering that "I've always loved the red and black - that's why I wanted to be president of Richmond."

 

7. Broadcom - A classic 1980s Spiv Boom enterprise which paid $24 million for the  TV rights for 6 years in 1986 (how times change). Unfortunately, Broadcom had not quite figured out how they were actually going to broadcast matches. Instead, Channel 2 stepped in for a year and the Broadcom 'media empire' was not heard of again.

 

8. Powerplay - The corporate entity of Edelston and his consortium of spivs. After supposedly paying $6 million for the Swans licence in 1985 it sold the licence back to the AFL for just $10 in 1988. The next syndicate of Sydney white shoe types paid $5.8 million for it on a Harvey Norman interest-free basis and somehow conned the AFL that they would have it all paid off over 15 years. Four years later the Swans were (once again) bankrupt and the AFL took back the licence - this time for nothing.

 

9. Sportsplay - Related entity of Related entity of 'Powerplay'. Suffered similar fate.

 

10. Tim Johnston - Apparently his company was going to float on April 1. Football world - consider yourselves warned.

 

 

Grounds for dismay

 

In another back-to-the-future episode this week, Carlton announced that it's looking at returning to Princess Park.

Carlton keen to revive old home

The AFL has put some of its money where its mouth is on the subject of a third stadium and will spend up to $100,000 investigating the feasibility of Carlton's traditional home as a third venue for premiership matches.

Sources have confirmed that the league has commissioned a feasibility study of Carlton's home ground, which would hold as many as 25,000 in its current configuration — a capacity that could accommodate a sizeable portion of the low-drawing games against non-Victorian clubs.

Carlton's latest plans are hardly surprising given that every home game at Etihad Stadium now brings a similar financial return to an investment in a Tim Johnston company. As a result, Carlton now regrets leaving Optus Oval about as much as Andrew Johns regrets inviting his mates back to that Christchurch hotel room in 2002. (Johns must now be wishing that Cronulla had sold that week’s game to the Gold Coast for $400,000 instead.)

 

Carlton reckons it can cash in on the 'Geelong model', where the Cats make more money from 24,000 from their own 'boutique' ground than they would make from 64,000 at the MCG. As far as 'boutique' grounds go, returning to Princess Park is like taking your favourite pig to a boutique to put some lipstick on it. And as any ecstasy dealer in Melbourne will tell you, returns are always higher at Boutique than any other venue.

 

The AFL has commissioned a $100,000 'feasibility study' into once more playing at the ground, though it does beg the question of why would the league spend $100,000 for someone to tell them 'Yep, we played there before, I s'pose we could play there again'.

 

Football Invective.com queries why this 'study' into suburban grounds must be limited to Princess Park only. Why not consider re-commissioning the animal enclosure at Moorabbin, the wind sock at Windy Hill, or bringing back the bourbon-swilling filth of Victoria Park. Or what about Waverley? Even with 95% of the grandstands demolished it would be big enough for an average game against West Sydney.

 

But, as with everything in which the navy Blues are involved, other clubs should beware of the Carlton ulterior motive in this one. The Blues also want to lure other Melbourne clubs to play games there so they can also skim their share of the gate receipts. Seriously - would anyone trust Carlton not to be just as much of a rapacious landlord as Etihad Stadium? If you think they wouldn't, then our mate Tim Johnston has a great deal for you on some cutting edge automotive industry products.

 

 

Hero of the Week: Chris Tarrant - Given that the Gold Coast (like its Brisbane Bear predecessor in that fair city) looks like being a retirement home for washed up has-been players, Tarrant may have been someone that GCFC talent scouts had a close eye on. Instead, he journeyed to that sunny place for shady people and returned in triumph with the sooking scalp of Fev. Has-been no longer.

 

Cult Figure of the Week: Zac Dawson - 3 years after his 6-goals-in-a quarter humiliation at the hands of Anthony Rocca, Dawson had his revenge on the big boy. Rocca had better hope there were no NFL talent scouts watching or he will have blown his chances of following big bro to the US and instead will have to settle for following Mum and Dad into the family pizza parlour for his post-football career. Meanwhile, Stephen Milne can consider himself lucky the Saints were playing on Monday night so he didn't have to watch 'Four Corners' instead.

 

Clanger of the Week: Matthew Johns picks himself for this one. Eleven in the hotel room plumbs new levels of ignominy for the thirteen-a-side game. Meanwhile, Ronny Coote, the rugby league legend who inspired generations of players on the field (and generations of rhyming slang off the field) must be shaking his head in dismay.