Reward plan for minor premier
THE AFL will consider prizemoney for the minor premiers as part of a bid to elevate the prestige of the McClelland Trophy.
AFL commission boss Richard Goyder put the issue on the agenda as he presented the trophy to Adelaide chairman Rob Chapman last September.
Chapman said yesterday a sum of about $200,000 would be an appropriate figure to celebrate the home-and-away season’s best team.
AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan has agreed to consider the issue for next season, aware football rarely celebrates its minor premier.
In the NFL, a team is feted for winning the AFC or NFC championship — even if they lose the Super Bowl — and yet in the AFL only the grand final victor is celebrated. As Chapman said, the Crows made the grand final and after a poor performance “got carved up” by critics all summer despite their season of excellence.
The AFL has already agreed to meet the costs of travelling teams in the grand final, with Chapman estimating it cost the Crows up to $250,000.
The AFL premier receives $1.2 million in prizemoney, the runner-up $660,000 and losing preliminary finalists $330,000.
Teams playing in the semifinal get $110,000 and the seventh and eighth-placed teams are handed $71,000, with the minor premier capable of falling all the way to fifth.
Remarkably, total prizemoney has fallen for AFL finals since 2007.
The premier in 2007 received $1.1 million and runnerup $550,000, but the seventh and eighth-placed teams received $137,500.
In total, the AFL hands out $2,893,000 in finals prizemoney, $2000 less than 11 years ago.
Chapman says he raised the issue with the AFL as a competition-wide concern rather than to reward Adelaide.
“When Richard Goyder presented it to me at the preliminary final last year, he got up and made a big deal about it and said, ‘I think we have lost the significance of the McLelland Trophy’,’’ he said.
“It is about saying, ‘Guys, you have had a great home and away season’. If you win the grand final, you get the accolades but if you finish on top of the ladder and if you live in our shoes after the grand final, we got carved up as if we finished 17th. It just happened to be us last year, it could be any team.”