'Schoolyard bullies' ... is the AFL running sport's version of the Spanish Inquisition? Source: JOE CASTRO / AAP
AFL's reputation as the schoolyard bully on Australia's sporting landscape has been enhanced by its decision to prevent a Port Adelaide employee from volunteering to help A-League club Adelaide United find a new coach.
Darren Burgess, the highly respected strength and conditioning coach who worked with the Socceroos and English giants Liverpool before returning home to work with Port Adelaide in the AFL, was seconded by the board of Adelaide United to contribute to a panel formed to recruit the Reds next coach.
Centre of storm ... Darren Burgess. Source: News Limited
Other members of the panel are former Socceroos Craig Foster and Alex Tobin.
Burgess's role was to be purely voluntary. He has a real affinity with football and has experience in the game at the highest level that would be hard to find anywhere else in Australia.
Given his understanding of elite team sport and the role of the coach therein, it seemed a reasonable thing for the Reds to seek his opinion in choosing a permanent replacement for John Kosmina.
But those plans were scuppered when the AFL hierachy personally and directly intervened, instructing Port Adelaide that Burgess was not to have involvement with Adelaide United on any official basis.
Technically, the AFL commission might have a right to dictate those sort of terms to its member clubs, but the question is why they chose to do so.
What are the AFL worried about?
The only explanation is the obvious one, which is that the AFL is the biggest kid in the schoolyard and is looking to exact total dominance over the marketplace.
The AFL's apparent attempts to run a totalitarian state bring into sharp focus Graham Arnold's comments after Central Coast Mariners' game last weekend.
Asked if he watched Western Sydney Wanderers play the previous night - the team he has been battling all year for A-League supremacy - Arnold replied that he didn't see the game because he was watching the NRL.
If the AFL is running Australian sport's version of the Spanish Inquisition, then surely Graham Arnold would have been burnt at the stake.
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