The Lucky League
Thoughts on the AFL administration’s growing legitimacy crisis
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Social preview image courtesy of the ABC website.
Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country is wrong in the ways 60+ year-old nonfiction books tend to be: it is too confident in its conclusions, too intolerant of other points of view, too ignorant of confounding evidence. But the things that make it outdated, from the perspective of 2026, are also – paradoxically – the same things that have given the book its cultural staying power. Its bold central thesis is encapsulated by the opening words of the final chapter:
Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.
In much the same way as some Reaganite conservatives misunderstood Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA as a patriotic hype song, some Australians have chosen to interpret Horne’s book as endorsing a particular kind of complacent homegrown nationalism: whaddya mean, mate – we’re the bloody lucky country! But Horne wasn’t especially interested in those comforting bromides. Instead, he argued that Australia’s prosperity was the product of luck – luck of geology, luck of political inheritance – not the quality of its leaders or the scope of its ambition.
If Australia is the lucky country, rich and safe despite only sometimes mustering the energy and smarts usually required to be so, then the AFL is the lucky league. The quality of its decisions and the people making them have never been under more scrutiny. The disgruntlement of many of its stakeholders and consumers, at least on social media, feels like it’s at record levels. Fans are unhappy. Clubs are unhappy. Even players and umpires have expressed discontent. It seems the only exception is broadcasters and content creators, who have abundant amounts of raw material to work with. Andrew Dillon has tried to fix it. He’s thrown Laura Kane overboard and parachuted in Greg Swann to buy himself some political capital. That ploy seems to have failed. People are as mad as ever about the way footy is being run. But commercially, the AFL has never been in ruder health. The line keeps going up. I want to explore this tension.
Before considering why people are so angry at the current AFL administration, there’s a preceding question to ask: was there a world in which people weren’t going to be angry? After all, take a look around. Everyone, everywhere, seems to be angry about almost everything. It’s not clear to me why footy, a sport which both exerts huge influence on people’s emotional – and, in the gambling age, financial – wellbeing and is not immune to broader social currents, should be any different. We get mad because it matters. So does the medium. Saying that people are mad at the Dillon regime is tantamount to saying that they’re mad at the Dillon regime on social media. Even what remains of the traditional footy media is increasingly shaped by and for social media. It’s clear enough that this has perverse incentives: social media is both a vessel and an amplifier of our frustrations. We’ve seen this play out hundreds of times: a pundit, podcaster, or provocateur uncorks a performatively angry take. Their audience finds a new reason to get angry. That anger is expressed through shares, replies, and arguments. Lots of heat, not much light.
There’s also a narrower form of the argument that everyone is already angry, which is that everyone is already angry at all the people who run major sports. Perhaps claiming that the AFL is unusually poorly run is provincial or self-absorbed thinking. There is, as far as I can see, not much love out there (from supporters, at least) for Gianni Infantino, Adam Silver, or Roger Goodell, or whoever is currently running the A-League. (Peter V’Landys is a possible exception here, but it seems like much of his political capital is derived from taking pot shots at the AFL, and even then, lots of NRL supporters seem annoyed by some of his wheezes like taking the game to Las Vegas.) Some of the issues assailing these sports are different from the ones facing footy. No one is calling for Andrew Dillon’s head because of the second apron or petrostates buying clubs or because Albo pressured him to overturn a star player’s suspension ahead of a knockout final. The AFL also faces some unique problems, which I’ll touch on later. But the people running the world’s major sports are mostly facing discontent about similar issues: officiating, parity, the influence of gambling, and disquiet about their role as social actors.
Social media and the ambient discontent which permeates life These Days are part of why it feels like the AFL administration is under siege. But they’re amplifying a signal that already exists. The main culprit for the discontent footy fans feel with the AFL is undoubtedly the AFL itself. I first had the idea of writing a piece like this after the fallout from the Lance Collard case. A quick refresher for readers who, understandably, are having trouble recalling the details given that April may as well be a year ago: the young Indigenous forward was suspended for using a homophobic slur against an opponent in a VFL game. St Kilda successfully reduced the suspension following an appeal. Tensions, already high, were further inflamed after the appeals board, the body which administers the process, wrote that it is “commonplace that players can employ language from time to time which is racist, sexist or homophobic whilst on the field.” This, to quote Douglas Adams, made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move. A head needed to roll. One was found in the form of Will Houghton, the silk who had chaired the appeals board for two years. Predictably, the summary dismissal of an independent advisor for saying something inconveniently true didn’t solve the problem in the way the AFL had hoped. But the league had, at least, found a scapegoat. The fact this all happened concurrently with the AFL sanctioning Zak Butters for drawing attention to an umpire’s paid employment with a betting company was just the icing on the cake.
It’s probably futile to try and capture all the reasons so many different stakeholder groups are unhappy with the Dillon administration. But I’ll give it a go anyway. Supporters are unhappy about umpiring. They’re unhappy about the league’s defence of umpiring. They’re annoyed at perceived inconsistencies at the tribunal. They’re angry about the AFL rolling out the red carpet for betting companies. Many are unhappy about draft concessions – some for narrow, sectional reasons, others because of broader concerns about competitive integrity. Some supporters are unhappy because they believe the AFL has conceded too much ground to progressive political causes. Others, meanwhile, are unhappy because they believe the AFL has not conceded enough. Fans are annoyed about the fixture. Some, like me, are perturbed by the capriciousness of rule changes and the league’s willingness to turn the dial towards openness and transition. Many in my quaint corner of footy nerd twitter are puzzled by the behaviour of the AFL’s social media accounts and the preoccupations of some of the league’s house journos. Concussion and CTE. The ARC. Goal songs. The opacity of the league’s illicit drugs policy. Ticket and membership prices amid a cost-of-living crisis. I’m sure I’ve missed some things, but this already sounds enough like We Didn’t Start the Fire as it is. The anger is palpable. And the end result is twofold: widespread dissatisfaction with how the Dillon administration runs the show, and deep scepticism whenever it proposes any sort of reform.
Ultimately, though, one tendency of the current administration frustrates more than any other: it is hopelessly reactive. The AFL feels like it’s locked in a cycle of patching a leak somewhere to get through the day or appease a disgruntled interest group, only for the hull to spring another leak somewhere it hadn’t anticipated. This sense of frustration is felt at AFL clubs, too. One club staffer, who spoke to me off the record for this piece, bemoaned the AFL’s tendency to “layer in fixes in which they create a problem, they create a fix which creates more problems, and they create a fix, and so on.” This is especially apparent in recurring tweaks to both interpretations of rules like holding the ball (which I could write an entire essay about – including how pundits and commentators contribute to misunderstanding) and the draft. The fancy term for the AFL’s problem is that it’s systemically incapable of recognising second-order effects; the thing that happens as a consequence of the thing you do in the first place.
Although I assume a small number of the supporters who have dramatically threatened to stop following the game because of umpiring/rule changes/Laura Kane have actually done so, the main cost to supporters is just that it’s annoying to see the AFL make these sorts of blunders. But for people who work at AFL clubs – including players – it can significantly impact their ability to do their jobs. Changes to bid matching criteria interfere with draft strategies which are often planned years in advance. Changes to the ruck rules rendered a certain class of ruck virtually obsolete at AFL level overnight. The discontent expressed by the staffer I spoke to is not an uncommon sentiment. That should probably concern the AFL, especially considering the decision to appoint Greg ‘Common Sense’ Swann, who’d spent 11 years at Brisbane, was widely interpreted as a move designed to mollify clubs.
Disgruntlement with the current administration goes beyond supporters and clubs. The AFL Umpires’ Association expressed its unhappiness with the league following the Round 17 incident where Collingwood’s Brayden Maynard and Gold Coast’s Touk Miller made contact with umpire Nick Brown. According to Channel 7 reporter, Tom Morris, several umpires were shocked that Maynard escaped a ban, but also weren’t surprised, “given the lack of support they’ve felt from the AFL in the past.” In the past day, it’s even emerged that umpires are (reasonably) unhappy with a social media post from the AFL’s account which highlighted that Matt Stevic – the umpire at the centre of the controversial 50-metre penalty awarded against Adam Cerra at the MCG on Saturday night – will be umpiring this weekend. One major stakeholder group being unhappy? That can happen. Two major stakeholder groups being unhappy? That’s careless. Three major stakeholder groups being unhappy? Even if you subscribe to the theory that if everyone is equally unhappy that means you’re doing something right, that suggests you’ve got a problem.
It’s worth briefly contemplating whether any of this could have been avoided. Can you possibly have a widely respected, or at least tolerated head office in any major sport in 2026? I’m not sure thinking about the Wayne Jackson or Andrew Demetriou days is helpful here. They existed in a time before social media and before a 24/7 media cycle fed by content entrepreneurs, when footy was a pastime, not the totalising social institution it is today. That may as well have been a century ago.
Instead, it’s more instructive to compare the AFL to cricket, soccer, rugby league, and the big US sports. Again – with the significant caveat that I don’t follow any of them as closely as I do footy, and in the case of league I barely even know the rules – none are immune from scandal and stakeholder unrest. Cricket’s problems are existential: the pull towards franchise cricket and growing power of Indian interests is threatening domestic competitions and traditional forms of the game. (For what it’s worth, I do think the AFL is facing its own existential problem – concussion – but I don’t think that’s what’s generating much of the current discontent.) FIFA is, uh, amenable to financial inducements [when you are your own editor and lawyer, it’s best to err on the side of discretion]. The other sports are slightly more comparable in the competing interests they try to appease and the major issues they confront: revenue distribution, player welfare and remuneration, gambling, officiating. These are Normal Problems, in the sense that any capable administrator should anticipate them arising. But their specific instantiation is almost impossible to predict. Here’s where I have some sympathy for the people who run the AFL. They oversee a dynamic game, with a vibrant media ecosystem, where edge cases are the norm. No holding the ball adjudication or dangerous tackle is ever quite the same. Consistency is impossible, common sense a chimaera.
Would the frustration be less palpable if AFL House was better at communicating the case for rule changes, better at explaining umpiring decisions (and supporting umpires), better at balancing competing social justice claims, and better at gradually introducing changes to the draft to minimally disrupt clubs? Probably. But, as I’ve already said, to a certain degree, the whole system is optimised for maximum attention and outrage. All publicity is good publicity. There’s another problem here. The costs to the AFL of the AFL making bad choices isn’t very high. Sure, some execs sometimes get demoted or quietly shuffled out of the deck. But accountability stops a couple of rungs short of the top. Gillon McLachlan walked out of the top job and into a sinecure with a betting company (I would prefer if he was not allowed to do that!). The global search for his successor stopped at the guy just a few doors down. Hiring from within, especially to an idiosyncratic organisation, is often the right choice. But the AFL certainly didn’t waste much time trying to persuade the footy public of the merits of the appointment.
The AFL is also less accountable than you would hope or expect an institution of its size to be because it wields a virtual monopoly over the sport. If you’re disgusted by the financial inequalities of club soccer, you can invest emotionally in the international game (while holding your nose when it comes to FIFA). There are other basketball leagues, other cricket competitions, other places where rugby league is played. Perhaps none are as good as the morally compromised, apex-level competitions, but they’re a decent substitute. That’s not the case with footy. You can still find the odd state league diehard who’s resisted the lure of the national competition, but they’re more of a curio than a genuine constraint on the conduct of the AFL.
The American economist Albert Hirschman identified three means of self-expression in an organisational setting: exit, voice, or loyalty. Exit means withdrawing from the relationship. Voice means speaking up. Don’t feel comfortable with the actions of your employer? You can exit – quit – or exercise your voice by calling for change from within. Are you worried about the actions of your government, or anxious about your economic security? You can vote for the opposition or emigrate. Loyalty is what it says on the tin: sticking with your guys. Exit and voice aren’t always sufficient to drive accountability. But they’re necessary, because organisations need incentives to be responsive to stakeholder demands. When it comes to footy, the strength of our loyalty is part of why exit and voice feel so weak. Exiting is a non-starter for all but the most committed and the most furious supporters (these are often the same people). The AFL clearly doesn’t regard exit as an especially credible threat – the league has been busily trying to expand into new markets, arguably at the cost of neglecting already-saturated markets, for the better part of 20 years now. And there are few avenues to exercising our voice. We can’t elect a reformist AFL administration. Attempts to mobilise supporter interests are – with apologies to the AFL Fans’ Association – not taken seriously. The best thing we can do is probably the thing many supporters are already doing: complaining on social media.
The AFL has created its monopoly by squeezing state leagues, but it’s also done it by being the custodians of this incredible, exhilarating game that commands our emotional loyalties. One is reminded of Mark Zuckerberg’s quip about the founders of Twitter as resembling a clown car that fell into a gold mine. If you’re a fourth-generation Carlton fan, or a Freo fan that’s hoping, wishing, and praying for that maiden flag, or – like me – a kid who fell in love with the game because it helped teach him how to be Australian, then the goofs and blunders of the people at AFL House might irritate you, but they’re unlikely to seriously call your loyalty to the game into question. Footy has imperfect substitutes, but for millions of the people who follow it, nothing hits quite the same as the real thing. We’re prisoners who, at some point, walked into the cell and willingly swallowed the key.
To the extent that complaining about the Dillon regime on social media represents a concerted project to drive change, it’s failed. But, ironically, it probably fails even by the strict terms of expressing dissent. Negative polarisation drives engagement. More angry reacts, more clicks, more talkback callers, more stories catering to that base instinct. I’m sure the AFL administration would rather be loved than disdained. But so long as people keep watching, I’m not sure they care. The current administration isn’t weakened by record numbers of people using their voice to express disillusionment if those people remain loyal. Only exit would send a signal that would be heard at AFL House. That isn’t happening. The 2025 financial result showed revenue up 16%, over $1.2 billion, driven largely by the first year of the new broadcast deal, and an operating surplus of $67.9 million, up from $45.4 million the year before.
One in 20 Australians are members of an AFL club. Attendances in 2026 are tracking ahead of last year’s, with round after round setting per-game records. Last Thursday’s game between Fremantle and Sydney was the highest-rating primetime AFL match on free-to-air since 2022, reaching more than 3.3 million Australians. None of this is exactly evidence of a league in crisis. And if the league isn’t in crisis, how can we honestly say that the administration which runs it is? Discontent isn’t a metric the AFL is failing to manage. It’s a metric the AFL doesn’t care about, so long as it doesn’t mess with the metrics that do matter. Bad process and unforced PR errors are tolerable as long as they don’t show up on the bottom line or in TV ratings – and there’s not much evidence, yet, that they do.
I’ve spent the best part of 3,000 words writing about the manifold reasons so many people are unhappy with the AFL without yet discussing what many readers will have identified as the main issue: the logic of expansion into new markets. Attracting new customers is very different to retaining old ones. The AFL has clearly made the strategic choice to accompany the push into Queensland and New South Wales with a set of list concessions, rule changes, and communications practices designed to appeal to new supporters, partly by accelerating and then maintaining the competitiveness of the Northern and expansion clubs. That, inevitably, imposes costs on incumbent clubs and rusted-on fans. Part of the frustration many supporters feel with the AFL is the frustration of neglect. I would be fascinated to see how the AFL’s revenue breaks down by “old markets” versus “new markets”.
Ultimately, an organisation that captures its customers without earning them or without feeling like it has to do anything special to keep them has no structural incentive to improve. The internal metrics the AFL uses to assess the performance of Andrew Dillon are opaque. The external ones – revenue, memberships, ratings – are all trending up. The discontented supporters cataloguing grievances on Footy Twitter were never the audience that rule changes designed to speed up the game were built for. They’re for broadcasters, for the highlight reel, for the fan watching their first game of the season on a Thursday night rather than the fan who’s been to every home game since the turn of the millennium. That’s the business model. Traditional fans are a peripheral part of that.
What I suppose I’ve been trying to get at throughout this entire essay is that the AFL’s monopoly position, plus its cultural ubiquity (which, it must be said, previous administrations have built), have created a situation where second-rate governance – or at least second-rate in the eyes of the people who’ve loved the game for a long time – is the status quo. So what are we to do about it? The AFL will be responsive to supporters only when they begin to threaten the bottom line. Clubs could force a change in behaviour or leadership. There is some evidence they are losing faith with the Dillon administration. But clubs don’t always want the same things (consider draft concessions and Academy bids). Broadcasters could drive change, but why would they?
Donald Horne would warn us that incompetence eventually erodes even the strongest position. Albert Hirschman would implore us to use our voice or find the exit. But for all of us – me included – who don’t know if they can, there’s the timeless advice of another influential thinker, Donald Trump, who wrote, in a tweet from October 2012: “The Coca Cola company is not happy with me--that’s okay, I’ll still keep drinking that garbage.” For as long as the product it controls remains so addictive, the AFL doesn’t need to be good. It certainly doesn’t act as though it believes it needs to keep most of its stakeholders onside. It just needs the line to keep going up.
People always need something to complain about - and footy gives us plenty of opportunities for that. Umpiring! Anyone tried it? Anyone thought about how an umpire is geographically in an entirely position to the camera we witness these events through TV? How the umpire sees things from their perspective - they are not dumb, clowns or (heaven forbid) cheating: it's what they witness in a split second. And it will always be difficult with rules as complex and interpretative as we have in AFL. Is it dropping the ball, holding it or holding the man without it or, maybe, incorrect disposal! Try umpiring before being too critical - I did for 10 years and it's possibly the hardest thing I've ever done. So my big complaints with AFL these days are (1) screaming commentators who seem to think the present/next passage of play is the greatest/worst thing anyone has ever seen (bring back "Smokey" Dawson, Doug Hayward and the ABC); (2) fireworks before a game which still pollute the stadium half way through the first quarter and it's difficult to see what's happening at the other end; (3) blaring/deafening music after each home goal is scored - I'm at the football and can go to Festival Hall if I want to listen to a concert; (4) betting ads (and the Gill McLachlan issue raised by Mateo is SO pertinent); (5) trying to ensure that every team is eligible to play in the finals. So, having said that people need something to complain about, I have.....