Anyone that thinks unregulated football budgets for community football leagues are harmless and won't affect them need a lesson in fundamental supply and demand economics.
It's a similar story to how unaffordability in the housing market is actually extremely dangerous for real estate investors. As it's impossible for people to buy a property, the demand decreases, when demand decreases, you have an oversupply, when you have an oversupply the value of the good drops, when the value of the good drops investors start to sell, which exacerbates the oversupply and the market "crashes".
In order to be competitive some football clubs and leagues have effectively created a market bubble by overpaying and over inflating football budgets. As clubs struggle to remain competitive and generate enough revenue, the market of playing football becomes unaffordable for those clubs, then they start shutting their doors. As there is nowhere local or convenient to play for the kids of the area the demand to play football drops and they decide on Soccer or Basketball or Video Games instead. After a while there are more clubs than there are kids to fill them and the football market crashes. The feed of young men that these high playing leagues and clubs are so greedily snapping up all of sudden won't be there anymore. They'll be playing Soccer. Those clubs will then become a victim to the same economic cycle and will have to shut their doors, or reduce the number of sides or junior programs...
Is this what we want? Clubs folding, leagues dropping away, reduced junior programs and kids choosing Soccer? Just so you can have a paid-for-premiership? It seems unimaginable but let's stop pretending that this is a Country vs Metro issues or an SANFL vs GSFL issue. It's more profound and critical than that. This is a survival of the sport issue. It has to be done - some clubs might feel like they're being dealt the rough end of the stick, but regulating and controlling football budgets will ensure that the stick only hurts a little bit now so that they can survive and be around in 2050 to enjoy the sport.