With the completion of a successful Toyota 2019 AFL Premiership competition and the trade period soon to conclude, all that is left is for some sort of labour rort to take centre stage.
It is early and much can transpire in a short time, but the current drama finds a threat to the 2023 AFLW season.
This is a case of shooting the goose that laid the golden egg in the foot.
The AFLPA, headed by none other than Patrick Dangerfield, failed to ratify a new collective bargaining agreement by the desired 75 percent of the players.
It needs to be sorted, as the AFLW has turned out to be a star of great magnitude that has expanded to 14 clubs, with St. Kilda, West Coast, Richmond and Gold Coast added for 2023.
There were critiques following 2019, when the AFLW experimented with a seven-round system with two conferences, five clubs each, which meant that certain clubs never played some of the other clubs.
Part of that was due to the dominance by Conference A, to the extent that some of the clubs in that conference were clearly superior to the clubs in Conference B, yet the league chose to build a finals series with clubs from both conferences.
At the moment, players and everyone else are denied any certainty of a reason for getting prepared for the new season.
Dangerfield expressed some disappointment on how the matter was unfolding and he spoke of the need for player cohesion, saying, “I’ve never seen a playing group get a result by being divided. So we need to stick together … that’s the only way that we’re going to move forward.”
AFLW players are entitled to find the best possible deal, even if the management ranks feel that the entire group is an ungrateful bunch, but the AFLW is still building.
The fact that it has grown so quickly in all areas should serve as a beacon to all parties, but there do seem to be times when egos and reality clash, to the detriment of all.
