Monitoring the Money
I dislike the way we talk about money within the AFL. Let's get better at it
Real panic is built in the unknown. There is no greater arbiter of chaos and confusion then a human-mind unable to comprehend that which it cannot understand. The great horror film directors understand this, crafting stories where the true fear comes from unseen factors. It’s not about shock-value jump-scares or gore, it is about allowing the audience to imagine the worst by refraining from revealing the truth. Because the human mind is capable of creating unparalleled turmoil for itself, purely via the great purveyor of fear; not knowing.
Horror is designed to unnerve you. It is curated to leave you wondering, intended to distort your sensibilities. Horror is the only healthy place for the unknown to exist, because tension is part of the entertainment. Not knowing sucks in real life, where all it does is complexify situations that should be far more straightforward. For instance, contract detail reporting in everyone’s favourite real-world arbiter of incompetency, the AFL.
The wolves of Marvel Stadium. The AFL has a serious money issue. Not in terms of its cash-flow or net-growth, where I’m sure things are operating quite fruitfully. The AFL has a money issue because they have fostered a discursive environment where exploration of how money flows between teams and players is clouded by a fog of the Unknown.
Speculation is a symptom of lack of truth. Discussing contract details in footy is like throwing a dart at a swimming pool; its essentially pointless. Like a horror viewer being brought to dread only by relentless camera-cuts and an anharmonic soundtrack, we confer guesswork about the salary cap; we don’t actually know what we’re scared of yet, we don’t actually know how the cap is filled.
What results is a cesspool of non-transparency, incomplete analysis, misguided effort, and a system that alienates athletes for wanting to be paid as much money as possible to play a sport that can break bodies in an instant.
The Economy Era
Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera, Sam Walsh, Tom De Koning, Mac Andrews, now.
Zak Butters, Zac Bailey, Nick Daicos, Bailey Humphrey, to come.
A conglomerate of other young stars nearing the end of their rookie deals. From here on out, every pre-season summer is going to be about one thing – increasingly sizable contracts.
The big money contract era is upon us, as is a new epoch of football discourse. While Cornesian chagrin has been well established, we can allow ourselves to look beyond the on-field implications of long-term, large salary deals. How are these players spoken about, to what extent have they ‘earned’ these deals, and should we be advocating for a less frugal, more fiscally friendly league? There are only so many hyper-vague ‘RECORD HIGH NUMBER OF PLAYERS IN THE 2 MILLION DOLLAR CLUB!’ articles I can handle. The lack of conciseness openly opposes the ushering in of the consequential contract era, in its current state. The league has left its audience unprepared for what to come, tactlessly akin to the work of our greatest horror auteurs.
Syntax Salary Speak
The AFL’s money issue is revealed beneath the surface. Because specific details are kept under wraps, inconsistencies emerge in reporting around contracts. Journalists are compelled to scourge attention by embracing the lack of transparency. When a player signs a new deal, the news reveals follow a pattern of harsh generalities. The deals are MASSIVE, they are MEGA MONEY, they are players REJECTING RIVALS TO SIGN HUGE CONTRACT EXTENSION. Contracts are not defined by their monetary value, but by the catalogue of adjectives available to our leagues most prominent media members.
We may get told some arbitrary number to give us some sense of scope about the salary details, but nothing more. We aren’t told how the contract sits relative to the rest of the team, of what percentage the players salary takes up in the overall cap. Afterall, saying that Tom De Koning has signed a MEGA-DEAL sounds a lot more dramatic then revealing that it only takes up roughly x% of the Saints overall cap. De Konings contract, and all others across the league, should only be analysed in its relative existence to the rest of the team. Unfortunately, we cannot do that and are left to estimation, and heightened criticism; like a horror audience, we begin to overcompensate our understanding because we don’t really know what’s going on.
By only using large generalities to describe contracts, we put more pressure on players to live up to it. The worst thing a player can do for their reputation is sign a big money deal. The lack of knowing means we put more weight on contract obligations then any other sporting fandom; the obligation of course defined by the need to live up to the contract, a task rendered impossible given we set the bar at a height that is no doubt wrong.
To say a player must perform up to their 1.5-million-dollar contract only holds meaning if we know what that pay is relative to other players. Maybe your favourite contract-inspired whipping boy at your club only earns 4% of the overall cap, an insignificant figure. In a vacuum, the contract number we are given, which is always given with the pretence of a ‘reportedly’ asterisk, cannot mean anything. It’s missing the forest for the trees; except we don’t even know what a forest is.
Being Financially Friendly
The AFL should become more financially open. If we were told the specific details of all contracts, how they are paid, when, incentives, etc. there would be a greater understanding of how it all works, and more valuable conversations can be had.
Above that, it would alleviate the pressure put on players who are fortunate enough to put pen to paper on large salary deals. It’s easy to say that contract details should be kept private because a person’s salary is exactly that, a private matter. However, public salaries would actually benefit players, as well as teams. It allows players to truly understand their value amongst the cohort and can prevent teams from shady payment actions that disenfranchise athletes. It gives them an agency that has been long denied. AFL athletes aren’t just regular private employees.
It allows teams to control the narrative against feisty media. Not only would news breakers be given accurate details to report, but teams can make sure people understand how they came to the number and allows fans to have a better understanding of why their teams do what they do. It lets clubs to control the narrative and limits the capacity for players to suffer anxiously over criticism rooted in performance verse payment. Team narratives are far less toxic than media ones.
Public details increase transparency, which equates to a greater overall understanding, which results in a less chaotic ecosystem that subjugates players into numbers, rather than humans. It makes the game less like a horror film, and more like a normal, fine-tuned sporting league.
A New Normal
It’s an indecent concoction of media reporting and fan-induced misunderstandings that has led to the deeply unfortunate way that money in footy is discussed and analysed. Money is taboo, salaries are secret.
Journalists discuss player contracts in an opaque manner, leaving more questions then answers, and never committing to viable information until the very last second. The gossip exists in a vast void, lost somewhere in between incoherent guesswork and hyper-individualised reporting. You’ll get a million reports on one specific player from January to December. We’ve been getting chatter about Harley Reids next contract extension and the supposed money involved in it; a contract that won’t be signed until at least 2028. They can zoom in on one particular player non-stop, conversations even appearing within games themselves, but all these discussions always come with an admission of speculation – the salary details are reported in rough estimates, the implications unexplored.
As I have insisted upon already in this Substack, the not-knowing of it all only leads to more misunderstandings for footy’s wider fandom. Because salaries are reported with guesswork and extreme descriptive generalities, it opens to door to more scrutiny. Specifically, it opens to door to associate money in football with player behaviours and attitudes, more so then their actual footballing abilities.
It is a common notion that players should be willing to sacrifice payment for the betterment of the overall team. Older players should only sign short and small-term deals for the sake of others; underperformers should forgo the backend of their deals to compensate. Money is seen as something players are given, not something they have earned. Because we have incomplete understanding of how money operates within the ecosystem, due to its incoherent reporting, we put more weight on these payments. Therefore, the conclusion that it is selfish to sign yourself up for big money becomes seemingly valid. Since we don’t know the cap details, we conclude that big money deals automatically subjugate wider team development. Because of the unknown, we cannot discuss money in footy with nuance.
This isn’t to say that teams haven’t found success partly due to experienced players taking paycuts; the Cats have certainly been doing it during their 20 years of sustained [redacted]. Without getting into 3rd party payment conspiracies, its key to note that it is only experienced players taking these pay cuts, guys of the Joel Selwood, Tom Hawkins ilk, who have had full careers of earning and are financially comfortable in contorting their deals to accommodate others. Putting that expectations on younger, unproven athletes is simply an amoral resolution.
Players are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Either you get paid and for the rest of time, your performance (good or bad) is measured against your paycheque, or you don’t get paid what you deserve. Mitch McGovern got called selfish by the Carlton faithful for not living up to the demands of his high-paying contract, insistent that he take a pay-cut; the criticism is one of personal futility, not strictly of his footballing capacity.
It really is a shame how poorly this league handles money as a talking point. It’s a top-down issue, where one decision has led to another, and resulted in a sense of unease that benefits no one. If you want to take the path of ‘we should absolutely not know what someone earns’, that’s fine, in the small picture. But it would have to be a complete nothing, no media or fan ventures into assumptions about payment. In that world, the only way it could work is for it be completely out of our grasp, with zero reports on contracts, salaries, or free agency. Although, this would no doubt lead to more issues, as fans grow confused over who plays where each summer, entering new seasons with players inexplicably popping up for different teams with no warning. That would be good theatre, I suppose.
However, this middling grey area we reside in just doesn’t work anymore. Salaries and contracts are too important to the ecosystem of the modern AFL. Trade Radio is a phenomenon, Mitch Cleary is a household name. Non-stop reporting of contract details without ever revealing the true value of these deals only renders the game further into the unknown elements that cause dissonance and mind-numbing discourse.
With open public player contract details, we would get an increase in accurate reporting, healthier discourse, a decrease in player payment anxiety, and we would allow teams to have greater transparency with their adoring fans. It would be against all AFL ethos to do this, though. They do prefer being Alien (1979) then, you know, a well-adjusted sporting competition.