A calculated $2 million gamble, or will this come back to haunt an AFL pioneer?

The Advertiser

3 days ago

North Melbourne has long been a pioneer in Australian football, going back more than 50 years when it nabbed the huge signature of Ron Barassi as coach then exploited the short-lived 10-year rule to recruit a clutch of established stars on its way to a first premiership.
And more than half-a-century later, everything but nothing has changed. That is, the Roos are no longer anything like the powerhouse football team they became back then. But as a club, North Melbourne is still punching above its weight, trying to offset inherent disadvantages with some left-field thinking.
Like on Sunday afternoon becoming the team to launch AFL football's newest venue, Hands Oval in Bunbury, 170 kilometres south of Perth, in a "home" game against a side actually from WA, West Coast.
Taking calculated gambles in the hope of growth is indeed an old North Melbourne calling card.
After the 10-year rule, a decade later in the mid-1980s, North was doing it again when, with newly-erected floodlights at the MCG, the Kangaroos stamped their brand as Friday night football specialists.
But with innovation comes risk, as the club discovered in 1999 when it officially changed its primary name from North Melbourne to Kangaroos in a bid to become a "national team", playing four home games in Sydney and another in Canberra.
It was a move fiercely resisted by the Swans, didn't inspire the surge in support for which the Roos had hoped, and perhaps even unintentionally assisted the AFL's push to move North Melbourne to the Gold Coast over 2006-07, a bid the Roos only just managed to prevent.
As a smaller Victorian club, however, North Melbourne is constantly having to be "flexible and agile", as former AFL chief executive Gill McLachlan famously put it, in a commercial sense.
The Roos have been playing three or four "home" games a season in Hobart since 2012. But with the arrival of a Tasmanian AFL team imminent, they've now struck a three-year deal with the West Australian government to play two "home" games in WA, which happen over the next two weekends.
After Sunday against the Eagles in Bunbury, the following Saturday the Roos will play Fremantle in Perth. And yes, it will be classed as a "home" game, despite it being at its opponent's real home ground, one of the most notoriously difficult venues for visitors from other states.
The deal is believed to be worth $2 million per year to North Melbourne. But not for the first time in these situations, the side playing home away from home is on a hiding to nothing.
The Roos might be 17th on the ladder, but there's one team below them, and it's Sunday's opponent, which has won only one game for the season. A North Melbourne victory will be exactly what is expected of the Roos. Lose to the Eagles, and a well-worn debate will kickstart again. Just a few days after the last one.
St Kilda coach Ross Lyon has been stirring the pot quite a bit lately. His reference to Gold Coast as the AFL's "nepo baby" the other week had the Suns seething. And his comments about clubs moving home games made last February were dragged out and dusted off after his Saints beat Melbourne in Alice Springs last Sunday.
"Once you start selling your home games interstate you are hanging your shingle out the front that says you are not a serious footy club," Lyon said back then. And that remark certainly carried more weight after St Kilda inflicted Melbourne's third straight loss in an Alice Springs "home game".
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That could prove costly indeed, given the Demons are already two games outside the top eight after having lost their first five games of the season. But is it always that simple?
Lyon's own St Kilda, for example, like Hawthorn, played "home" games in Launceston from 2001. But after six seasons, at the end of 2006, the Saints bailed, for football rather than financial reasons.
Hawthorn promptly relished the opportunity to be the only AFL presence in the city, and is still ensconced there, having signed another two-year extension in February worth about $9.1 million. Those Tassie home games certainly weren't worrying the Hawks too much when they won the 2008 premiership, nor that famous flag hat-trick from 2013-15.
And while it's easy for the likes of Lyon to stand firm on the question of home venues and their importance to a club's heart and soul, how can a club accurately calculate just how much a lower ladder finish will cost it in pure dollar terms were it to sell home games?
That is a hard figure indeed to estimate, and a dangerous one to play guessing games with, particularly if you're North Melbourne, which has historically always had one of the smaller support bases, small even during the club's most successful eras of the 1970s and 1990s.
Wouldn't any responsible administration and board be accepting the $2 million rather than banking on one or two of 23 home and away games being played at a "real" home making all the difference in football terms?
North Melbourne has played that game of hope before without any tangible return. Indeed, it won its 1996 premiership the same year it came within a whisker of merging with Fitzroy. So you can't blame it now for looking primarily at dollar signs rather than a slightly better chance at merely grabbing four match points.
North Melbourne has long been a pioneer in Australian football, going back more than 50 years when it nabbed the huge signature of Ron Barassi as coach then exploited the short-lived 10-year rule to recruit a clutch of established stars on its way to a first premiership.
And more than half-a-century later, everything but nothing has changed. That is, the Roos are no longer anything like the powerhouse football team they became back then. But as a club, North Melbourne is still punching above its weight, trying to offset inherent disadvantages with some left-field thinking.
Like on Sunday afternoon becoming the team to launch AFL football's newest venue, Hands Oval in Bunbury, 170 kilometres south of Perth, in a "home" game against a side actually from WA, West Coast.
Taking calculated gambles in the hope of growth is indeed an old North Melbourne calling card.
After the 10-year rule, a decade later in the mid-1980s, North was doing it again when, with newly-erected floodlights at the MCG, the Kangaroos stamped their brand as Friday night football specialists.
But with innovation comes risk, as the club discovered in 1999 when it officially changed its primary name from North Melbourne to Kangaroos in a bid to become a "national team", playing four home games in Sydney and another in Canberra.
It was a move fiercely resisted by the Swans, didn't inspire the surge in support for which the Roos had hoped, and perhaps even unintentionally assisted the AFL's push to move North Melbourne to the Gold Coast over 2006-07, a bid the Roos only just managed to prevent.
As a smaller Victorian club, however, North Melbourne is constantly having to be "flexible and agile", as former AFL chief executive Gill McLachlan famously put it, in a commercial sense.
The Roos have been playing three or four "home" games a season in Hobart since 2012. But with the arrival of a Tasmanian AFL team imminent, they've now struck a three-year deal with the West Australian government to play two "home" games in WA, which happen over the next two weekends.
After Sunday against the Eagles in Bunbury, the following Saturday the Roos will play Fremantle in Perth. And yes, it will be classed as a "home" game, despite it being at its opponent's real home ground, one of the most notoriously difficult venues for visitors from other states.
The deal is believed to be worth $2 million per year to North Melbourne. But not for the first time in these situations, the side playing home away from home is on a hiding to nothing.
The Roos might be 17th on the ladder, but there's one team below them, and it's Sunday's opponent, which has won only one game for the season. A North Melbourne victory will be exactly what is expected of the Roos. Lose to the Eagles, and a well-worn debate will kickstart again. Just a few days after the last one.
St Kilda coach Ross Lyon has been stirring the pot quite a bit lately. His reference to Gold Coast as the AFL's "nepo baby" the other week had the Suns seething. And his comments about clubs moving home games made last February were dragged out and dusted off after his Saints beat Melbourne in Alice Springs last Sunday.
"Once you start selling your home games interstate you are hanging your shingle out the front that says you are not a serious footy club," Lyon said back then. And that remark certainly carried more weight after St Kilda inflicted Melbourne's third straight loss in an Alice Springs "home game".
MORE AFL NEWS
That could prove costly indeed, given the Demons are already two games outside the top eight after having lost their first five games of the season. But is it always that simple?
Lyon's own St Kilda, for example, like Hawthorn, played "home" games in Launceston from 2001. But after six seasons, at the end of 2006, the Saints bailed, for football rather than financial reasons.
Hawthorn promptly relished the opportunity to be the only AFL presence in the city, and is still ensconced there, having signed another two-year extension in February worth about $9.1 million. Those Tassie home games certainly weren't worrying the Hawks too much when they won the 2008 premiership, nor that famous flag hat-trick from 2013-15.
And while it's easy for the likes of Lyon to stand firm on the question of home venues and their importance to a club's heart and soul, how can a club accurately calculate just how much a lower ladder finish will cost it in pure dollar terms were it to sell home games?
That is a hard figure indeed to estimate, and a dangerous one to play guessing games with, particularly if you're North Melbourne, which has historically always had one of the smaller support bases, small even during the club's most successful eras of the 1970s and 1990s.
Wouldn't any responsible administration and board be accepting the $2 million rather than banking on one or two of 23 home and away games being played at a "real" home making all the difference in football terms?
North Melbourne has played that game of hope before without any tangible return. Indeed, it won its 1996 premiership the same year it came within a whisker of merging with Fitzroy. So you can't blame it now for looking primarily at dollar signs rather than a slightly better chance at merely grabbing four match points.
North Melbourne has long been a pioneer in Australian football, going back more than 50 years when it nabbed the huge signature of Ron Barassi as coach then exploited the short-lived 10-year rule to recruit a clutch of established stars on its way to a first premiership.
And more than half-a-century later, everything but nothing has changed. That is, the Roos are no longer anything like the powerhouse football team they became back then. But as a club, North Melbourne is still punching above its weight, trying to offset inherent disadvantages with some left-field thinking.
Like on Sunday afternoon becoming the team to launch AFL football's newest venue, Hands Oval in Bunbury, 170 kilometres south of Perth, in a "home" game against a side actually from WA, West Coast.
Taking calculated gambles in the hope of growth is indeed an old North Melbourne calling card.
After the 10-year rule, a decade later in the mid-1980s, North was doing it again when, with newly-erected floodlights at the MCG, the Kangaroos stamped their brand as Friday night football specialists.
But with innovation comes risk, as the club discovered in 1999 when it officially changed its primary name from North Melbourne to Kangaroos in a bid to become a "national team", playing four home games in Sydney and another in Canberra.
It was a move fiercely resisted by the Swans, didn't inspire the surge in support for which the Roos had hoped, and perhaps even unintentionally assisted the AFL's push to move North Melbourne to the Gold Coast over 2006-07, a bid the Roos only just managed to prevent.
As a smaller Victorian club, however, North Melbourne is constantly having to be "flexible and agile", as former AFL chief executive Gill McLachlan famously put it, in a commercial sense.
The Roos have been playing three or four "home" games a season in Hobart since 2012. But with the arrival of a Tasmanian AFL team imminent, they've now struck a three-year deal with the West Australian government to play two "home" games in WA, which happen over the next two weekends.
After Sunday against the Eagles in Bunbury, the following Saturday the Roos will play Fremantle in Perth. And yes, it will be classed as a "home" game, despite it being at its opponent's real home ground, one of the most notoriously difficult venues for visitors from other states.
The deal is believed to be worth $2 million per year to North Melbourne. But not for the first time in these situations, the side playing home away from home is on a hiding to nothing.
The Roos might be 17th on the ladder, but there's one team below them, and it's Sunday's opponent, which has won only one game for the season. A North Melbourne victory will be exactly what is expected of the Roos. Lose to the Eagles, and a well-worn debate will kickstart again. Just a few days after the last one.
St Kilda coach Ross Lyon has been stirring the pot quite a bit lately. His reference to Gold Coast as the AFL's "nepo baby" the other week had the Suns seething. And his comments about clubs moving home games made last February were dragged out and dusted off after his Saints beat Melbourne in Alice Springs last Sunday.
"Once you start selling your home games interstate you are hanging your shingle out the front that says you are not a serious footy club," Lyon said back then. And that remark certainly carried more weight after St Kilda inflicted Melbourne's third straight loss in an Alice Springs "home game".
MORE AFL NEWS
That could prove costly indeed, given the Demons are already two games outside the top eight after having lost their first five games of the season. But is it always that simple?
Lyon's own St Kilda, for example, like Hawthorn, played "home" games in Launceston from 2001. But after six seasons, at the end of 2006, the Saints bailed, for football rather than financial reasons.
Hawthorn promptly relished the opportunity to be the only AFL presence in the city, and is still ensconced there, having signed another two-year extension in February worth about $9.1 million. Those Tassie home games certainly weren't worrying the Hawks too much when they won the 2008 premiership, nor that famous flag hat-trick from 2013-15.
And while it's easy for the likes of Lyon to stand firm on the question of home venues and their importance to a club's heart and soul, how can a club accurately calculate just how much a lower ladder finish will cost it in pure dollar terms were it to sell home games?
That is a hard figure indeed to estimate, and a dangerous one to play guessing games with, particularly if you're North Melbourne, which has historically always had one of the smaller support bases, small even during the club's most successful eras of the 1970s and 1990s.
Wouldn't any responsible administration and board be accepting the $2 million rather than banking on one or two of 23 home and away games being played at a "real" home making all the difference in football terms?
North Melbourne has played that game of hope before without any tangible return. Indeed, it won its 1996 premiership the same year it came within a whisker of merging with Fitzroy. So you can't blame it now for looking primarily at dollar signs rather than a slightly better chance at merely grabbing four match points.