Father-son statement
12:11:23 PM Thu 20 April, 2006
afc.com.au
Adelaide chief executive officer Steven Trigg has made a statement about the father-son rule.
The assertion that the father-son rule changes of 2001 were based on a submission by this Club is incorrect.
The Adelaide Football Club and the clubs from WA made a submission in 2001 that the rule - which was clearly lopsided in favour of the Victorian-based clubs, plus Sydney and Brisbane - was needing amendment so as to include our clubs.
A committee/working party was then formed to investigate the father-son rule and the draft system.
The changes to the father-son rule at the time were based on figures obtained by the AFL from the SANFL and WAFL.
The 200 SANFL game benchmark for the two SA-based AFL clubs was based on the number of players presumed to be eligible. The club had no problem with the 200-game threshold – and the WA teams with 150-games – as this was simply a number which provided parity between states in respect to the number of eligible fathers.
Subsequently, however, these figures supplied by the SANFL were shown to include games that shouldn’t be counted and there were consequently far less 200-game players eligible for the father-son rule than initially presumed.
This is why the Adelaide Football Club made a more detailed submission to the AFL late last year seeking further changes to the eligibility rules.
We are bitterly disappointed by the latest changes to the father-son rule. In another 15-20 years the new rule will be fair for all clubs. But the fact remains that for a long period of time, Adelaide, Port Adelaide, Fremantle and West Coast have been, and will be, clearly disadvantaged by the 100-AFL game rule.
Adelaide now has 27 players who have played 100 AFL games for the club but we are unlikely to have any sons of these eligible footballers available for at least another decade. Combined with the restrictions of the 200 SANFL games ‘pool’, it means this club is unlikely to have a father-son selection in its first 25 years of existence.
The inference in recent days that this Club itself changed the father-son rule – and provided the figures – back in 2001 is simply not correct.
The Adelaide Football Club engineered the review but the figures were provided by the AFL and the resolution (s) by the committee.
Steven Trigg
Chief executive officer