What is the responsibility of a team to put out its best players for a regular season game, even when it's not otherwise in their best interest to do so?
It seems to happen in a game or two every year, regardless of sport. End of season, one team with something to play for, the other not so much - either because they've got their playoff spot locked up, or they're just biding their time having already been eliminated.
(You see it in the NBA mid-year sometimes, when a coach will rest older stars after a tough stretch of games.) Does the second team have an obligation to put a competitive team out there in such a game - either "for the paying customers" or, more usually, "for the integrity of the game"?
As the last round of the AFL season approaches this weekend, there are a couple of games in which this very question arises. Fremantle, having already locked up home field advantage, has no statistical reason to play its stars, and every motivation to rest them for next week's critical opening playoff game. As many as
ten of its best players may sit out Saturday's game against ninth place Port Adelaide; fortunately, this game ended up having no bearing on playoff positions, as Port cannot break into the top eight under any circumstances.
It did change the betting line from a fairly even game in Adelaide to the current line of almost fifty points in Port's favor, though. Oddly, where it's going to have an impact is in the WAFL, where Fremantle's "minor league feeder team", the Peel Thunder, plays. Peel is in
its opening playoff round this weekend...but needs to supply up to ten players to the Dockers to fill out their roster against Port, leaving
it undermanned in a
playoff game.
Business is business, but that seems terribly unfair to the team you've partnered with!
The more punitive scenario this week happens in Melbourne, where Friday's Richmond/North Melbourne match has been sullied
(my words) by
North's decision to rest up to ten of ITS players this weekend in anticipation of playing the Tigers again next week in an elimination final. By essentially conceding this game (and foregoing, by the way, the potential possibility of moving up as high as sixth if Western were to lose big, and therefore earning a home game themselves!), North has also prevented the Adelaide Crows from the possibility of passing Richmond and thus earning
themselves a home game next week, a fact which
has the Crows management understandably incensed. The Kangaroos' defense hinges on the fact that they've had two short weeks of preparation in a row (Sunday to Saturday, Saturday to Friday) and the players have been impacted by that: a defensible argument, admittedly. Broadcaster and retired superstar
Wayne Carey sported a frightening thought on afl.com.au's "Pick A Winner" broadcast Thursday:
"The Kangaroos now can put in 8-10 players that are not going to play finals footy. They can go out and maim Richmond players," Carey said on AFL.com.au's Pick A Winner.
"They can go hard, they can be told by Brad Scott 'Go out there, hit this side as hard as you can, because it looks like we'll be playing them again next week'.
"I think the AFL really opened up a can of worms here and watch this space."
Carey said the Roos resting players was "a completely different situation" to minor premiers Fremantle sparing up to 11 regular players a final round trip to face Port Adelaide, because the Dockers-Power clash won't affect finals positions.
"Whereas I think this does manipulate where the Kangaroos and obviously the Tigers and Adelaide (finish), so it does have some bearing on the finals," Carey said.
"This rule has to change, because now the one game that had something riding on it all of a sudden has been manipulated by resting players."
(By the way, Carey was a North Melbourne player himself, so this isn't about bias...)
Another situation that happens along these lines is
whether or not bottom of the ladder teams need to play their top line players at the end of the season when competing against sides that have "something to play for" or, as is generally accepted, run some youngsters through the mill after their own elimination from contention to see what the potential is for next year and beyond. Very few people question that use of a roster, and in fact if your first team isn't getting the job done, it's often the case that injecting that fresh blood into the lineup will
improve the performance of the team anyway!
But what if you're in a system (like virtually
every major professional sport is) where your draft order is determined by the reverse order of finish? Doesn't it behoove teams like Brisbane, Carlton, and Gold Coast in the AFL to
lose as many games as they can to secure the highest draft position they can? In America, it's the NBA which has suffered under the strongest perception of this tanking prospect
(I can think of 76 situations off the top of my head...). and it's what drove the league into the lottery system thirty years ago - a solution which hasn't solved the problem. To their credit, it's hard to make an argument that any of the three AFL teams named has overtly tanked this last month or so - they're just not very good, to be honest. But how do you draw the line?
It brings to mind the high school basketball tournament where
both teams tried to lose a game at the same time to avoid playing the top seeded team...and if you
click on the link, you'll see just how comical it got. Justifiably,
both teams were suspended and removed from the tournament.
But it goes back to sportsmanship, and how you choose to answer the question, "What do we as a team owe the sport, owe the league, and owe our own integrity?"
It seems everyone has a different answer. Many people feel completely justified in the Al Davis / Oakland Raiders approach, "Just Win, Baby!"...which, ironically, doesn't always include the need to try to
win; as long as you're doing what's in YOUR best interest, that's all that matters.
I disagree.
There's a risk any time you take the field, yes, but you cannot "turn it on and off" like a switch - ask the Manning Colts in those years when they ran up those 13-1 records and coasted the last couple of games...and proceeded to lose game one of the playoffs to a team who was still in competition mode. If you have
legitimately injured players, by all means, rest them. But NEVER tell your players to give less than their best on the field - that's when injuries occur. If you're charging full price for your tickets, your fans deserve a full price game.
(Which brings up the travesty of charging full price for pre-season tickets, but that's a subject you can already tell which side of the fence we'll fall on...)
In the end, morals and good sportsmanship MUST win out. If other teams are depending on you to play a fair and competitive game, you need to do so - despite legislative opinion to the contrary, pro sports leagues are ONE entity, working out of a dozen or three franchises, and anything one does that hurts the entirety of the league is a mistake. If that needs to be "legislated" by a commissioner or governing body, you shouldn't be running a sports team: you haven't learned the basics of "sports-man-ship" yet.
