When the AFL can negotiate a billion dollar TV deal but can’t tell us whether a goal is a goal, fans get dudded and players ask: what’s the point?
As far as the AFL is concerned, every problem can be solved. Everything can be measured, conquered, spun and sold. Everything can be ameliorated with a snappy press conference, a diversionary thought bubble or a long lunch.
It doesn’t always work like that, of course. The game itself operates in the grey zone. The way it’s funded and administered is built on conflicts of interest, on give and take, on taking a progressive stance one minute and cosying up to the likes of Lachlan Murdoch the next. On any given day, the governing body oscillates between the imperial and the bush league.
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