Few issues in Australian sport generate as much media noise or emotional fan reactions as player movement, especially in our major winter codes the National Rugby League (NRL) and Australian Football League (AFL).
Contract negotiations, trade whispers and club defections dominate headlines, talkback radio, social media and fan forums โ often eclipsing the on-field action itself.
In the past month, the sport news cycle has been dominated by player movement controversies involving the NRL's Dylan Brown and Daly Cherry-Evans and the AFL's Oscar Allen.
The scrutiny these athletes face is one feature of a workplace defined by expectations rarely found in other industries.
In a world where professional athletes are simultaneously financial investments and human beings, can fans, athletes and leagues strike a truly fair balance when it comes to player movement?
A unique legal status
Professional sport is exempted from several commercial laws that otherwise apply to typical industries. This is due to its peculiar economics.
Crucially, leagues such as the AFL and NRL are permitted to operate as cartels, whereby clubs act collectively in ways that petrol stations or supermarkets legally cannot.
One outcome of sport cartels has been the implementation of various restrictive practices on the recruitment, transfer and remuneration of professional athletes.
Drafts, trade windows and salary caps are all anti-competitive mechanisms with two general aims: fostering โcompetitive balanceโ between teams and suppressing player wages to maintain leaguewide financial viability.
These mechanisms remain in place mostly due to co-operation between leagues and their player associations (the AFLPA and RLPA), as their underlying legal standing is in fact ambiguous.
Whether the AFL's draft would survive a court challenge is debatable.
Australia's varied player movement rules
National Rugby League
The NRL operates a salary cap model with free agency. This affords athletes strong freedom of movement, including the potential to switch clubs mid-season. Some consider this to be a negative, given constant media conjecture over player movements. However, it keeps the NRL perpetually in the headlines.
In the absence of a draft, individual NRL clubs are responsible for their own junior development and talent identification. The Penrith Panthers' historic premiership four-peat was underpinned by successfully leveraging their immense junior catchment to develop NRL superstars.
A benefit of this model is it maximises the opportunity for local juniors to play for their local team. This pathway from local junior to hometown hero authentically contributes to embedding NRL clubs within local communities.
Australian Football League
The AFL operates both a draft and salary cap, and players have considerably less autonomy.
Player movement occurs almost exclusively in the post-season. Despite this, clubs sweet talk rival players in the shadows outside this window, hoping to make signings official in the off-season.
This practice came into view this week by the controversy surrounding West Coast captain Allen's meeting with a rival coach.
The AFL draft takes place after the trade period and is the primary way for athletes to enter the competition.
The draft order is inverted, linked to clubs' on-field performance (the team that finishes last receives the first pick).
Clubs are largely removed from the process of developing junior athletes, which is centralised through the AFL's national talent pathway.
The athlete perspective
While professional athletes are often portrayed as privileged, there are few other professions that impose such severe restraints on the rights of workers.
The Allen controversy is a reminder the AFL operates a system where the clubs are masters and players well-remunerated servants.
For the crime of meeting another coach in considering his future, albeit clumsily, Allen was described as โselfishโ, โa sell-out,โ, โutterly disgustingโ and compelled into a press conference apology.
Criticisms of athletes as selfish scarcely acknowledge that, unlike doctors or lawyers, they have uniquely short timespans to exploit their sporting careers.
In many sports, as is the case in rugby league, athletes are disproportionately from lower socio-economic settings, where the money is life changing.
The fan perspective
Professional sport thrives because fans are emotionally attached to their teams. Fans rarely switch the team they support, so they often expect the same from players.
Fan attitudes on player loyalty are therefore largely driven by emotion rather than rationality. Few fans employed in contract work would reject meeting a potential future employer because of a sole dedication to their current employer, as was the case for Allen.
Even fewer fans would reject the ten-year, $13 million contract accepted by Dylan Brown to depart the Parramatta Eels, yet many booed him for doing so, as Melbourne fans did in 2012 after the departure of former No.1 AFL draft pick Tom Scully to Greater Western Sydney.
In 2007, Parramatta Eels fans even threw coins at departed player Jamie Lyon. Thankfully for Brown, Australia has since become a mainly cashless society.
Is there a fair balance?
Player movement in Australian footy codes is a system of regulations that attempts to balance the competing demands of various stakeholders.
In recent times, the NRL has explored the introduction of trade windows, and drafts, seemingly in response criticism over player movement and competitive imbalance.
Such proposals have received strong
pushback from the RLPA.
Responding to the Allen fallout, AFLPA boss Paul Marsh conceded the AFL ecosystem remains immature to player movement:
There shouldn't be outrage about this stuff but there is. As much as I think we should be mature enough to deal with this, it is the industry we are in.
The challenge for these codes therefore isn't just regulating player movement but confronting the double standard placed upon athletes that expects loyalty in a system designed to control.
Hunter Fujak, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management, Deakin University and Joshua McLeod, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
โTraded like assets, expected to be loyal: the unique double standard of being an Australian footy playerโ
Rubbish ! In most professional team sports, world-wide, athletes are bought and sold. To claim that the principle is somehow โuniqueโ to Australian football codes destroys the credibility of the piece.
โExpected to be loyalโ ? On the contrary, players are expected (by clubs and by supporters) to _not_ be loyal. Clubs and supporters understand very well that if all the club can offer is a new contract that is significantly less than the that which rival clubs can offer, then the player is likely to move out of his comfort zone with his existing club, and chase the dollar in another club / state / code. As you have observed, athletes have a short period in which they can earn big money.
As for the issue of Dylan Brownโs treatment by Parramatta supporters, it might have been useful to think about why that five-eight has been booed, and why Sharksโ five-eight Daniel Atkinson, who has also signed for another club for 2026, has not been booed.
Perhaps the answer is that Atkinson, when he is on the pitch, gives his all and plays well. The supporters appreciate this and appreciate that the club cannot afford to keep a player of his class purely as a depth member of the squad. He has worked hard and impressed other clubs and the Sharksโ supporters do not begrudge him leaving at the end of his contract.
Brown is booed (in my opinion) because :
1) he is already on big money, and is playing badly and not delivering value to club and supporters.
2) the fact that he is bailing out of his contract โ on a legal technicality โ rubs salt in the wound. The supporters believed that he was contracted for several more years, and then it was announced that there was a get-out clause in it, and that he had exercised it.
There is an inherent contradiction here that I acknowledge. He is playing _so_ badly that supporters ought to be happy to see him go. I suspect that what we see and hear is the Parra supporters expressing their anger at the clubโs poor performance (again), and that one of the key players expected to help turn it round has basically signed-off for the season, and is just going through the motions.
โCriticisms of athletes as selfish scarcely acknowledge that, unlike doctors or lawyers, they have uniquely short timespans to exploit their sporting careers.โ
Not so. Clubs and supporters recognise that. What they get upset about are players who want to bail out of the contracts mid-way through (often claimed under the guise of โcompassionate groundsโ) and players who mess around the clubs by saying one thing and doing another. DCEโs treatment of the Gold Coast before his re-signing with Manly is a classic example. Clubs and supporters feel that when a player has signed a contract that the players should stick to it (which is hardly โloyaltyโ).
โ In many sports, as is the case in rugby league, athletes are disproportionately from lower socio-economic settings, where the money is life changing.โ
True, but irrelevant. The money is potentially life-changing for anyone who doesnโt have a parent who can give them a seven-figure gift to get them started with a deposit on a house. Thatโs at least 99% of the population.
The article reads like a beat-up by a couple of academics desperate to get into print with a publication.