FROM CRICKEY .COM...VIA BIG FOOTY

[stinger]

"Interesting article in today's edition of Crikey.

Roos look screwed if this is as reported. Hell hath no fury like an Andy D scorned.....



3. Broke 'within six months': Demetriou plots a Kangaroo cull


Charles Happell writes:

To a passerby, it would have looked like a harmless chat between two of the AFL’s most important figures; to people sitting nearby, it was significantly more important than that. For the discussion between AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou and AFL Players Association president Brendon Gale at a South Melbourne café last week revealed in gory detail how the league expects the Kangaroos to go broke before the end of next year – and how plans for a replacement team on the Gold Coast are already well underway.

This would mean a seamless transition between the death of the Roos – the club which this month spurned the AFL’s offer of a heavily subsidised relocation to Queensland – and the birth of the new Gold Coast outfit. So, effectively, there will be no need for a 17th licence; the integrity of a 16-team competition will remain intact.

The announcement of the signing of a 50-year lease on a stadium at Runaway Bay, a northern suburb of the Gold Coast, can also be expected soon. This will be the home of the new club.

It was last Thursday morning when patrons at the Montague Park café were given the impromptu rundown of the AFL’s plans by Demetriou, whose voice knows only one volume setting: foghorn. As the regulars were sipping long blacks and quietly minding their own business, at the next table Demetriou began outlining the League’s plans to Gale.

They heard Demetriou say that the Roos, by turning their back on the AFL’s lucrative deal to relocate to the Gold Coast, had "played into our hands". A neat segue – Roos out, Gold Coast in – was now possible.

He indicated plans for the new franchise, even down to the level of drafting rules for players, were already well underway. A Gold Coast starting date of 2010 was therefore on track.

They then heard Demetriou say he expected the Roos to go out of business "within six months" – an astonishing claim given that the club has just signed on Vodafone as a major sponsor, and has hefty commitments from several well-heeled supporters.

Presumably such a scenario could only take place with the connivance of the AFL. The Roos have been braced for a backlash from the AFL over their refusal to budge from Melbourne; now, it would seem, they need to batten down the hatches as well.

At one stage, Demetriou pulled out his Blackberry and read out to Gale details of the whizz-bang new facility at Runaway Bay. Demetriou boasted that it was "five times the size of the Lexus Centre" (Collingwood’s base in Melbourne).

A state-of-the-art complex has recently been built on the site that includes nine purpose-built villas which provide accommodation for touring groups or sporting teams, a FINA-approved 50-metre outdoor swimming pool, an IAAF-certified 10-lane 400-metre athletic track with 3,000 seater stadium, and an enormous gymnasium and health spa.

The amazingly indiscreet display left no-one in any doubt about the AFL’s plans: they now want to be rid of the Kangaroos. And they want to get a toehold in the fastest-growing area of Australia without any further delay.

It’s not the most conventional way to garner a story. But, in the same way that it’s impossible to ignore someone talking into a mobile phone when they’re in the same train carriage as you, so it was in the tight confines of the Montague Park caf (which, incidentally, makes a mean macchiato). Unless you had earmuffs on, there was no escaping the discussion.

Today, the AFL commission will meet in Melbourne to ostensibly discuss the prospect of a 17th licence and how it will realise its Gold Coast ambitions. There will be no announcements at the end of the meeting, for there is much detail to be finalised yet.

But at least we know where the AFL stands on this important issue. And we know this because it was broadcast to a small, surprised audience in a South Melbourne coffee shop.

The Kangaroos now will be in no doubt about the magnitude of the task facing them. For not only do they have to squeeze the pips (again) on their tiny membership base to raise the money to survive; they have to face a league that, like a woman scorn’d, is hellishly furious and bent on revenge."

[GrumpyOne]

Already posted Sting. But thanks anyway, big big implications to this.

[Oh When the Saints]

Already posted:

http://www.saintsational.com/forum/view ... hp?t=39328