This is just one possibility, of course.
Feel free to disagree
“Andrew, our campaign to undermine the SANFL needs to be ramped up.”
“I’m not sure what else we can do. We’ve tried everything, but they continue to grow. Their crowds are up, they’re all getting lights and most of them are pretty well off. They want more money from us, but we told them that wasn’t on while they’re paying players a fortune for a local league, so they’d have to make do with the million dollars we already give them for junior development. We told them to drastically reduce their salary cap, but they just paid lip service and tinkered with it. I’m at a loss what to do. We’re virtually powerless against the might of the SANFL. They scare me. What would we do if they told us to bugger off? We’d be in a hopeless situation.
We’d better try different tactics. They merged the Port teams and some of those posters on SA Footy said it was a plot by us. I wish I had thought of it, but let’s take the credit anyway. Now what can we do to show them who’s the boss here?”
”Not much, I’m afraid. We have no power and I’m shaking in my boots that they’ll tell us where to go. We’d never recover.”
“Wait a minute! I know! They play 180 games a season, right? Why don’t we tell the SANFL to programme the first game as a curtain-raiser to one of our games? Just once, mind you, we’d better not push our luck. I know we’ve done it before and it didn’t work, but this time it will ruin them.”
“You’re right! Stage 2! We both know that we’re running the Champions’ League purely to ruin the SANFL comp. I have to say I admire the way you’ve done it. You and Foxtel, of course. Invite teams from all states, put up some coin, televise the state league teams around the country - and ruin them. It would have worked, all the other states happily agreed, but I suppose we always knew those top SANFL teams would see through it in the end. We just had to give up against the might of those teams.”
“OK, we’ll keep trying. Fortunately those SANFL Commissioners are on our side. They haven’t got a clue, none of them know anything about footy and they certainly don’t care about the SANFL. That first game curtain-raiser got past Phil Gallagher without him noticing at all. I know nearly all the others have spent a lifetime working for their SANFL clubs, but we both know they were always ‘sleepers’, just waiting to get on to the Commission to do our bidding when the time comes. We did well to organize each team’s league director to vote them on.”
“Well, that’s all well and good, but they’re going to have to lift their game. Their comp is healthy – that’s not what we wanted them to do.”
“Don’t worry, that first round curtain-raiser will work. It will ruin them. So let’s move on to the AFL comp. Those pictures. GWS, the Gold Coast, the TV rights, etc, etc.”
You’re kidding, they don’t matter, I’m just going to keep working on the main game.
Those SA Footy posters who see through our plots instantly.
