Traded like assets, expected to be loyal: the unique double standard of being an Australian footy player

Few issues in Australian sport generate as much media noise or emotional fan reactions as player movement, especially in our major winter codes the National Rugby League (NRL) and Australian Football League (AFL).

Contract negotiations, trade whispers and club defections dominate headlines, talkback radio, social media and fan forums — often eclipsing the on-field action itself.

In the past month, the sport news cycle has been dominated by player movement controversies involving the NRL’s Dylan Brown and Daly Cherry-Evans and the AFL’s Oscar Allen.

The scrutiny these athletes face is one feature of a workplace defined by expectations rarely found in other industries.

In a world where professional athletes are simultaneously financial investments and human beings, can fans, athletes and leagues strike a truly fair balance when it comes to player movement?

A unique legal status

Professional sport is exempted from several commercial laws that otherwise apply to typical industries. This is due to its peculiar economics.

Crucially, leagues such as the AFL and NRL are permitted to operate as cartels, whereby clubs act collectively in ways that petrol stations or supermarkets legally cannot.

One outcome of sport cartels has been the implementation of various restrictive practices on the recruitment, transfer and remuneration of professional athletes.

Drafts, trade windows and salary caps are all anti-competitive mechanisms with two general aims: fostering “competitive balance” between teams and suppressing player wages to maintain leaguewide financial viability.

These mechanisms remain in place mostly due to co-operation between leagues and their player associations (the AFLPA and RLPA), as their underlying legal standing is in fact ambiguous.

Whether the AFL’s draft would survive a court challenge is debatable.

Australia’s varied player movement rules

National Rugby League

The NRL operates a salary cap model with free agency. This affords athletes strong freedom of movement, including the potential to switch clubs mid-season. Some consider this to be a negative, given constant media conjecture over player movements. However, it keeps the NRL perpetually in the headlines.

In the absence of a draft, individual NRL clubs are responsible for their own junior development and talent identification. The Penrith Panthers’ historic premiership four-peat was underpinned by successfully leveraging their immense junior catchment to develop NRL superstars.

A benefit of this model is it maximises the opportunity for local juniors to play for their local team. This pathway from local junior to hometown hero authentically contributes to embedding NRL clubs within local communities.

Australian Football League

The AFL operates both a draft and salary cap, and players have considerably less autonomy.

Player movement occurs almost exclusively in the post-season. Despite this, clubs sweet talk rival players in the shadows outside this window, hoping to make signings official in the off-season.

This practice came into view this week by the controversy surrounding West Coast captain Allen’s meeting with a rival coach.

The AFL draft takes place after the trade period and is the primary way for athletes to enter the competition.

The draft order is inverted, linked to clubs’ on-field performance (the team that finishes last receives the first pick).

Clubs are largely removed from the process of developing junior athletes, which is centralised through the AFL’s national talent pathway.

The athlete perspective

While professional athletes are often portrayed as privileged, there are few other professions that impose such severe restraints on the rights of workers.

The Allen controversy is a reminder the AFL operates a system where the clubs are masters and players well-remunerated servants.

For the crime of meeting another coach in considering his future, albeit clumsily, Allen was described as “selfish”, “a sell-out,”, “utterly disgusting” and compelled into a press conference apology.

Criticisms of athletes as selfish scarcely acknowledge that, unlike doctors or lawyers, they have uniquely short timespans to exploit their sporting careers.

In many sports, as is the case in rugby league, athletes are disproportionately from lower socio-economic settings, where the money is life changing.

The fan perspective

Professional sport thrives because fans are emotionally attached to their teams. Fans rarely switch the team they support, so they often expect the same from players.

Fan attitudes on player loyalty are therefore largely driven by emotion rather than rationality. Few fans employed in contract work would reject meeting a potential future employer because of a sole dedication to their current employer, as was the case for Allen.

Even fewer fans would reject the ten-year, $13 million contract accepted by Dylan Brown to depart the Parramatta Eels, yet many booed him for doing so, as Melbourne fans did in 2012 after the departure of former No.1 AFL draft pick Tom Scully to Greater Western Sydney.

In 2007, Parramatta Eels fans even threw coins at departed player Jamie Lyon. Thankfully for Brown, Australia has since become a mainly cashless society.

Is there a fair balance?

Player movement in Australian footy codes is a system of regulations that attempts to balance the competing demands of various stakeholders.

In recent times, the NRL has explored the introduction of trade windows, and drafts, seemingly in response criticism over player movement and competitive imbalance.

Such proposals have received strong pushback from the RLPA.

Responding to the Allen fallout, AFLPA boss Paul Marsh conceded the AFL ecosystem remains immature to player movement:

There shouldn’t be outrage about this stuff but there is. As much as I think we should be mature enough to deal with this, it is the industry we are in.

The challenge for these codes therefore isn’t just regulating player movement but confronting the double standard placed upon athletes that expects loyalty in a system designed to control.