Today's article is from Charles Happell at BackPageLead.com.au
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]There are some necessary evils in the world of Australian football, and the large, loud, lumbering, prickle-headed figure of Jeff Kennett is one of them.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]You may not agree with everything the former Victorian Premier says - in fact, it's quite possible you agree with absolutely nothing he says - but it's vitally important for the health of the AFL's delicate ecosystem that he be allowed to say it.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]For without him, there is a vacuum of constructive criticism about the league (short of the same two or three voices in the media) and how it is run. Other eminent footballing administrators - presidents, CEOs, Hall of Famers - are either too timid to say what they think or too compromised because their clubs are the benificiaries of significant AFL equalisation funds. So best not to rock the boat.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]So just as dung beetles, and those birds that pick ticks off the back of rhinos, perform such useful roles in the great web of life, so Kennett is crucial to a properly functioning and transparent AFL Commission.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]He continues a long line of provocateurs who have endeavoured to keep the bastards at AFL HQ honest: Footscray's Peter Gordon, Collingwood's Alan McAllister, Carlton's John Elliott and Fitzroy's Dyson Hore-Lacy among them.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]Sure, league CEO Andrew Demetriou would long ago have affixed a photo of Kennett's head to the dartboard in his comfortably appointed office but too bad. It's simply not healthy for a mega sporting organisation such as the AFL not to have someone poking it in the ribs every so often.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]There used to be a running joke in the newsroom at the old Sun newspaper on Flinders St. Quiet news day? Ring the head of the Victorian branch of the RSL, Bruce Ruxton, and he'll be sure to give you a story full of bombast and great quotes. And, almost without fail, the old soldier delivered.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]Herald-Sun reporters are clearly carrying on that tradition today. Sparse newslist at morning conference? Someone give Jeff a ring about global warming/the mining tax/NSW politicians/AFL incompetence/Kim Kardashian and that's page one taken care of.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]The former Hawthorn president again grabbed the headlines in today's Herald-Sun over the Essendon supplements scandal, saying at a business lunch that heads should have rolled at the Bombers months ago.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]He said the football world was far too busy protecting its 'personalities' to do the right thing by the game. 'The failure of the duty of care (at Essendon) in terms of the processes is so clear,' Kennett said. 'And if it had been at my club, there would have been accountability from the moment it became public.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]'... If you were in the private sector I can assure you, you would be held accountable. But in football, where we tend to support individuals, we often forget we have a responsibility for the long-term success of the code.''
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]Well, that sounds entirely reasonable to me; I'm happy that's been given an airing.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]There are many other issues over the years where Kennett has sounded off and I've thought, I'm glad someone's had the gumption to say that because it needed to be said.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]Sure, he's had his share of misfires and foot-in-mouth moments, none moreso than the smug pronouncement after the 2008 Grand Final that Hawthorn had a psychological hold over its vanquished foe, Geelong. Doh! Hasn't that worked out well? Or his call for Alastair Clarkson's sacking this year, then - Doh! - being forced into a hasty backtrack. Or slamming the idea of prayer rooms be installed at every AFL venue. Or sticking his bib into the internal machinations of other, less-wealthy clubs while Hawks president. And so on, and on.

<div class='story-intro' style='outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; background-color: transparent;]Yet, for me, the hits have outnumbered the misses.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; background-color: transparent;]In the past few years, Kennett has said the AFL Commission has compromised the standards of the game; he has railed against the Melbourne tanking decision, the sacking of Adelaide recruiter Matt Rendell and Stephen Trigg's survival from the Crows salary cap rort.


<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]He has said the league's club presidents no longer had any real power in an expanding national competition. That power rested largely with Demetriou whom he described as a 'benevolent dictator'.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]In that same vein, he took the AFL to task for its burgeoning bureacracy, saying he had read through the annual report and discovered the AFL administration now comprised 400 staff - the size of six AFL clubs. Which other club administrator thought to forensically examine the AFL's annual audit? And if they did, which of them dared speak up about it?
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]Kennett also took Demetriou to task for his seven-week European and Olympic vacation last year - not six weeks, as he mistakenly claimed - saying it was an abuse of his role as AFL chief executive officer.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]'I think six weeks is beyond the pale to be quite honest mid-season,' Kennett said at the time. 'I can understand having a holiday, I can understand going to Olympics .... (but ) six weeks mid-season I think that is an abuse of the employment that you currently occupy.'
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]He's also taken aim at the AFL's three-strikes drugs policy, calling it too soft and lenient. He said the league's refusal to implement a zero tolerance policy to drugs was partly to blame for engulfing the code in the doping drama in Australian sport.
<p style='margin-bottom: 1.3em; outline: 0px; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 22px;]Not everyone will agree with those pronouncements - some will find them misguided, ignorant, unnecessary, even repugnant - just more hot air from the original political blowhard. But I think the football world would be much poorer for his absence.