AFL
- A radical proposal to short-circuit pay negotiations with the AFL Players Association by putting an offer directly to the footballers to vote on has been placed before league bosses by Melbourne president and prominent industrial lawyer Glen Bartlett.
- The AFL says it will has put Gold Coast’s Metricon Stadium on standby if the decision is made not to play an historic match in China. Rising international tensions have raised some doubts about playing the May 14 Port Adelaide-Gold Coast game in Shanghai.
- Port Adelaide’s $4 million China trial in doubt from North Korea
- THE Port Adelaide Football Club strongly refutes unfounded media speculation that its upcoming game against the Gold Coast Suns in Shanghai on Sunday 14 May is in doubt.
- THE final piece of the Jiangwan Stadium jigsaw is being put in place, with the construction of the temporary stands for the historic Round 8 game between Port Adelaide and the Suns underway.
- Geelong and St Kilda have reinforced their bid to join the national women’s league in 2018, putting forward separate submissions to be considered this week by the AFL Commission.
- Sydney and Greater Western Sydney have expressed their frustration at the AFL’s underwhelming efforts in promoting and marketing the game in NSW and Queensland.
- THE AFL is optimistic it can break its all-time attendance record as 2016 strugglers Richmond and Essendon roar back to life. The league has just recorded its highest four-round total in VFL/AFL history, with 1,318,207 fans attending the first month of footy. That figure is up almost 20,000 on the next-best figure — 2013’s 1,298,738 — with old “Big Four” clubs including Richmond and Essendon pulling strong crowds.
- Is the alignment model destroying the DNA of East Perth?
A-league
- Football Federation Australia has failed to entice the three commercial free-to-air television networks into bidding for A-League and Socceroos matches, leaving the ABC in the box seat to gain the rights. Seven West Media, Nine Entertainment, Network Ten and current FTA rights holder SBS are understood to have not lodged an official bid with the FFA by last Thursday’s deadline, having baulked at some FFA requirements such as having to pay Fox Sports $2 million in annual production costs.
- National second division needed to boost player depth – IN the last round of the 2000-01 National Soccer League season, 199 Australians featured with 161 of those starting. In last weekend’s 27th and final round of the A-League, 69 Australians started while another 23 came off the bench.
NRL
- Andrew Johns says players want 26 per cent of NRL revenue
- Canberra Raiders chief executive Don Furner says a synthetic surface would be a big jump in Australian sport and it would need NRL approval to use it. Fairfax Media revealed last week chief minister Andrew Barr was looking into an artificial surface for the proposed $350 million rectangular venue.
- Phil Gould wants Penrith Panthers to be debt free in three years.
- The National Rugby League (NRL) has agreed a partnership with building services company AGI, which will invest AUS$50,000 (US$35,000) into rugby league grassroots growth and development projects in Western Australia throughout 2017.
Super Rugby
- Players are growing increasingly frustrated as the Super Rugby overhaul saga continues to drag on, with the ARU yet to announce if it will cut the Western Force or the Melbourne Rebels.
- The Australian Rugby Union should bolster its Melbourne market in the same way the AFL empowers Greater Western Sydney, according to former AFL and Melbourne Rebels chief executive Ross Oakley.
- Australian rugby needs Western Force and Melbourne Rebels should go, according to Matthew Bourke
- Former Western Force chief executive Peter O’Meara has questioned the independence of a top Australian Rugby Union executive involved in the process to cull a team from Super Rugby.
- The Australian Rugby Union’s chief operating officer Rob Clarke has broken months of media silence to savage former Western Force boss Peter O’Meara.
Other
- Netball Australia is in political turmoil, with board chair Anne-Marie Corboy standing down after less than a year in the post and then ousted as a director at a special general meeting called by the member organisations last week.
- State bodies move to engineer an overthrow of the Netball Australia board.
- The Nine network is looking to justify forking out more than $450 million in a new TV deal with Cricket Australia by seeking more control over the scheduling of matches and in-game advertising.
- Sport, local government and business go DIY in wake of journalist job losses
