Are we at deaths road ?

[Cam]

The dollars here should be ALOT less that overseas. We have a population the size of Texas, the united states has a population of 280 million. Japan 126m, Germany 83m, Turkey 67m, UK 60m, France 60m, Italy 57m, Spain 40m, Canada 31m*.

We have 2.54 people per sq km. UK has 244 p/km2, US has 29, Greece 80, Germany 233, France 109, Italy 191, Spain 79*. Travel for our sporting teams is a huge and costly undertaking.

Economy wise our country's Gross Domestic Product GDP is 445 billion which is good. France is 1.448 trillion, Germany 1.936 tril, Greece 1.81 bil, Italy 1.23 tril, Japan 3.15 tril, Netherlands 388 bil, Spain 720 bil, UK 1.36 tril, US 9.963 tril*

We can't compete with those kind of numbers and because we have tried to to a small degree our sporting organisations are going down the number 2 tube. All sport in australia has moved away from fun, character, mateship & loyalty as its base. Trade a brownlow medalist? Make Bradman retire? Coventry finish off his career in Sydney? Sport in australia? Reform or die.

* source: http://www.teachervision.com/ipa/A0004372.html

Hard at it. The Collingwood way.

[mka]

I believe the AFL have got it wrong. Some people are turning off the game because they do not see a realistic opportunity for their team. Sure miracles do happen and they nearly did this year, but lets get past the blind faith we have in our players.
Pound for pound we are not as good a side as Brisbane. I know people are going to come back with all sorts of reply's to this but get real people. Compare our grand final side to theirs and see which who would have the most players in a side.
|The system is loaded in brisbanes favour and people let the afl get away with this. It is a joke ,that we hear how they are going to go down as one of the greatest sides of all time. We hear how good it is that they have 3 brownlow medalists in their side. The facts are they are now one else can afford 3 brownlow meadalists. Ask melbourne supporters.
The afl know people like all of you reading this will still follow your side. They rely on this .
Yet they are only concerned about brisbane and sydney prospering so their supporter base grows.
You ,us , we are the blind faithful that go regardless.
And until we start to kick up about this nothing will change.

[bokka]

cam I'm well aware that we have a much smaller economy than the US and as I said, player payments are correspondingly a lot lower also. It's not true that we are trying to emulate the payments of sportsmen o/s, players are just trying to get what they are worth.
In fact it's much more of a case of the AFL trying to emulate the huge corporate style of clubs and competitions in the US and Europe that is the problem. Their #1 priority should be looking after the clubs and players and the competition as it is, with expansion and promotion o/s a close second.
Instead they seem to be squeezing the clubs and players for all they are worth, and pouring money into corporate style schemes and megaprojects like colonial. I mean colonial is a great thing but is not worth empoverishing the clubs and going into mega-debt for.
Cam as I said we shouldn't jump into a kneejerk reaction about player payments being much too high without having the qualifications or information to know what we are talking about.

There probably are economist reports on player payments but I bet the public will never see them since they would probably totally contradict the media-hammered current sentiments about player payments.