ANDREW Demetriou's revival this week of the relocation option for struggling clubs is a pointer to football's new state of uncertainty. The impression that the AFL is on a carefully mapped pathway to an 18-team competition, expanded by two new clubs, must now be re-thought.
Although it is little more than a fortnight since the AFL commission met with club presidents, and all emerged reciting from the same page, already the ground has shifted. The R-word has been heard, loudly and strategically, and clearly the relocation issue is alive again.
Listen, closely to the breeze, though, and you might even hear a word long forgotten from within the football lexicon. It's the M-word: for Merger. More of that later.
It is extraordinary that this talk could be occurring so soon after such an act of solidarity as the meeting of March 13. It reflects both the uncertainty existing about the competition's weakest clubs, and the reservations harboured by its strongest about the potential consequences of two new outfits being formed.
The weakest are North Melbourne and Melbourne. The Roos are particularly aggrieved at this week's discussion. They are in the process of attempting to convince a group of recalcitrant shareholders that the Gold Coast is dead as an option and that the group should hand back its slice of ownership.
This is crucial, as the AFL will not support the club beyond next year, through its additional special distribution fund, unless the Kangaroos become an exclusively member-based operation. Clearly, this is an issue of the gravest importance for the cash-strapped Kangas.
It didn't help them sell their argument to the shareholders when the AFL boss revived the relocation issue. While Demetriou's comments weren't pointed directly at Arden Street, they are likely to only encourage the renegade group to hold its ground.
North could now be caught in a vicious circle: relocation talk is revived; shareholders dig in; Kangaroos lose additional special distribution funding and their struggle for survival becomes the more desperate. While they're not suggesting this has been deliberately orchestrated, the Kangaroos are disappointed at the timing of Demetriou's comments.
Melbourne's plight is being seen as similarly urgent.
While the appointment of Paul McNamee as the club's new chief executive had a messianic ring for some, for others it rang an alarm bell. Those in the latter camp argue that Melbourne does not need a promoter as its chief executive so much as it needs a hard-edged, experienced administrator. They doubt McNamee fits the bill.
There are even suggestions that it is the McNamee appointment that has caused the winds of change to swirl so suddenly and unpredictably.
Certainly, when the commission and the presidents arose from their meeting of just over a fortnight ago, talk of relocations seemed to be almost a thing of the past. It must be said, though, that there are different interpretations of where the matter rested at the end of that day.
Demetriou said this week he was only raising the R-word because a couple of presidents had asked it be kept on the table. If this is the case, it has happened since the March 13 meeting. At that time, according to a couple who were in attendance, Eddie McGuire asked whether the presidents should consider that relocations were off the agenda. According to this account, commission chairman, Mike Fitzpatrick, gave an answer implying that since North hadn't seen fit to accept the Gold Coast offer it could be assumed that no other club was likely to relocate.
Is relocation the only answer for clubs whose Melbourne lives have become difficult to the point of near futility? That is a question likely to be aired more fully before this season is done. The other option is the one that the AFL swore off more than a decade ago: the merger.
It is interesting to consider that the only two clubs that ever agreed to go willingly to the altar were Fitzroy and North Melbourne in 1996. Their proposed marriage was broken by the other clubs and the AFL. Fitzroy was forced into a hostile takeover by Brisbane.
Recently, Roos supporters, too, almost lost their club to Queensland. There are those who argue that the Kangaroos should have gone; that they could have been like the Lions.
And they could: thousands of kilometres away, where their Melbourne-based fans can rarely see them play. Who knows, they might yet finish up there.
Had North and Fitzroy merged, both tribes of supporters would still have a local team to support and it would almost certainly have achieved success similar to that of the Brisbane Lions since the so-called merger with Fitzroy. The discredited merger option might not be the worst available to battling clubs.
Like a skeleton in the closet, it was just starting to rattle around again this week.
