Luke Beveridge: “It can’t all just be about revenue. It’s got to be about the beauty and nature of the game.” Photo: AFL MEDIA

Luke Beveridge is anything but a darling of the media. He doesn’t have the sort of cosy relationships with the fourth estate some of his peers do, and feels no need to perform for the cameras. So when the Western Bulldogs coach goes off script, it’s worth taking note.

And that’s what happened when Beveridge did his regular weekly press conference on Wednesday.

Asked for his take on the AFL’s changes to father-son and academy draft rules, Beveridge’s lengthy response expanded to also address the AFL fixture and the new “last touch” rule and then, most tellingly, his belief as to the reasons the league sought to speed up the game.

“We’ve turned the game into this ridiculous game of ping pong because we want money from broadcast because there’s more ads during the goals,” he said. “And it can’t all just be about revenue. It’s got to be about the beauty and the nature of the game, and we’ve got some challenges ahead.”

That the AFL wants a quicker, more open game and, presumably, the higher scores that would logically follow with that, is a given. But is the motivation really as cynical as simply generating more ad breaks for broadcasters and more revenue for the AFL?

I’m usually as cynical as anyone, but even I hadn’t thought that conspiratorially about it. The fact Beveridge has is significant.

And of course, it comes not long after his Geelong coaching peer Chris Scott wore plenty of flak from AFL headquarters for daring to publicly call out what the rest of us already knew, that the new wildcard finals was, above all else, about the folding stuff.
“I tend to think they just made it up. Just threw in a couple more finals for no good reason except cash,” Scott said.

Coaches are notorious for speaking about broader football issues entirely from a point of self-interest, but there’s nothing particularly about what Beveridge and Scott have mentioned that pertains to something their clubs are getting or not getting.

And while several of their peers, the likes of St Kilda’s Ross Lyon, Gold Coast’s Damien Hardwick, Collingwood’s Craig McRae, have at times weighed in on big picture football issues, Scott and Beveridge have been more pointed.

So have players. Bailey Smith raised the idea of a mental health round in a post-game interview, a suggestion fairly quickly sidelined. His response to that knockback was swift. “We can reward mediocrity and introduce wildcard round though,” he posted on Instagram, adding a clown emoji.

Fremantle veteran Mason Cox also questioned the motivation for the wildcard finals. It’s as though the battle lines are being drawn more clearly now among people involved at the highest levels.

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What are they? Essentially, a face-off between those who love and put the game and integrity of the actual AFL competition first, and those who hold the idea of the AFL as a brand and the pursuit of commercial interests to a higher level of importance. And it has the potential to become an ugly fight.

I know which side I’m on.

I’m an unabashed traditionalist, and to me the competition and its integrity is all. Does that mean we ignore revenue concerns or the AFL’s status as part of the entertainment industry? Of course not. But I reckon the current custodians of the game could be a lot less cavalier in how they go about their business, too.

Look at the dog’s breakfast which has been this year’s fixture. We’ve got another Friday night double-header this week, the Bulldogs v Fremantle at Marvel Stadium, and a SA Showdown in Adelaide.

The AFL argues that putting the Power v Crows on then “unlocks” Friday night exposure for the SA market. But, starting only 40 minutes after the Dogs v Dockers, doesn’t it also split the television audience, divide attention and force one of the biggest rivalry games in the competition to share oxygen with another fixture, potentially diminishing rather than enhancing two games?

Then on Saturday there is another of these Marvel Stadium doubles, Essendon and Brisbane at 12.35pm and St Kilda and Carlton on at 7.35pm. Two games at the same ground, on the same day, separated by seven hours.

The AFL is even selling the day as a “double-header ticket”, one pass for both games. Great value? Perhaps. But it also turns two standalone AFL matches into a packaged all-day event, one designed not merely to showcase football, but to maximise attendance, dwell time and spending.

How many people will go to both games? Is spending around four-and-a-half hours between the end of the first and start of the second at Docklands an enticing enough prospect? And will a double-header attract more fans than the ridiculously early start time of 12.35 drives away?

Having been to a couple of those 12.30 starts and feeling more like I was rocking up for my kids’ junior game, I have my doubts. From a football perspective, and from a fan perspective, it feels awkward at best.

No, none of these things in isolation amount to a crisis. And as Beveridge himself noted on Wednesday, the AFL is a punching bag at the moment.

But when seriously WTF moments like that anachronistic Appeals Board “explanation” in the Lance Collard homophobia case, some wacky ARC calls and continual knee-jerk responses get stacked on top of what looks like indifference to competition integrity, the picture painted in the minds of the football public is of a game run badly by people who don’t care enough about it.

And while it’s one thing for the punters to think the AFL only cares about money, when the most highly-regarded people actually at the coalface of the game start reflecting similar views, the league’s got a bigger problem than just copping criticism from coaches.

This article first appeared at ESPN.