The stunner

ONE wonders whether, at AFL HQ, they have some scruffy little guy in there who periodically says, “I have a very cunning plan”. Shrewdly noting a lack of currently extent controversy that no one else had detected, the AFL announces higher ticket prices for some matches. Indeed, with its usual care and attention to detail, the league leprechauns are reportedly happy to bring this in starting, err, now, in season 2013, after no due discussion with, or consideration toward, the general public, and apparently because they can. The scheme will be “trialled” (meaning to be inevitably adopted the following year), on some games that haven't quite been worked out yet, via a system known as “variable pricing” (i.e. they can set the tariff at whatever they like for certain games that haven't been worked out yet), or another known as “dynamic pricing” (they can change the prices on a whim for any games they like on a weekly basis – perhaps according to how things go at Thursday work drinks – and there are no set prices whatsoever). Careful observers may note that owing to a lack of any meaningful or definable parameters, neither can technically be described as a “system”, but that's the way the ball crumbles and the cookie bounces, particularly in AFL-ville. It's difficult to put into words how thrilled football supporters will be to find out they need a Oujia board to work out the price for any given match. Think enraged mob of villagers, pitchforks, blazing torches, Castle Frankenstein.

The snoozer

THE people are certainly showing their keenness for the pre-season AFL competition by flocking in their droves to anywhere but the grounds. In particular, there was a Skoda Stadium-like feel to the undetectable turn-out to the Adelaide/Port/St Kilda three-way dance, at the former Football Park. Saw a picture of the stands from the Vic-Qld Shield match during the week, and that crowd wouldn't have been dwarfed, put it that way.

The yak attack

JUST when things seemed to be going so well in Australian sport, a problem seems to have developed in the swimming area.

How far the cherry?

SECRET of comedy timing, part 8937. Late in the Melbourne-Richmond half-pint game on Friday, Dwayne Russell, confused as to why the Demons didn't try for a “super goal” to put themselves ahead, tendered a number of viable possibilities before concluding, apparently innocently: “Maybe victory wasn't quite their priority.” Response from his Fox Footy colleagues: “Aw, don't say that!” followed by a profusion of laughter.

Bozo of the week

THE months-long, profoundly painstaking AFL tanking investigation comes up with what almost seemed like a pre-ordained conclusion that there was no tanking, (remember in this jurisdiction, as has been often declared, tanking “doesn't exist”), but that the club concerned was fined, and two of its former employees suspended for lengthy periods, presumably for not being involved with the crime that doesn't exist, which the club never committed. So who, if anyone, was the culprit? Well, at considerable risk of repetition, here's one view. If a donkey runs amok and destroys the picturesque Arabian-style public marketplace causing considerable property/personal damage, do you arrest and charge the donkey? Or do you apprehend the fellow who dangled the carrot over the donkey's head just out of reach, until the creature went berserk?

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