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25 September 2006
The AFL's salary cap and player draft, once scorned by Carlton, now offer the club the chance to re-emerge as a football power, a new examination of the club's finances has concluded.
Monash University's Associate Professor in Economics Lionel Frost has written one of the pivotal chapters in a new book - Football Fever: Moving the Goalposts - in which he examines the factors that have contributed to Carlton's financial decline and may aid its recovery.
The book will be launched on 25 September.
Associate Professor Frost's book chapter, "Crossroads Blues", has examined the place of businessman and former president John Elliott in the club's financial spiral.
"In the first hundred years of VFL/AFL competition, Carlton was the game's most successful and financially strong club," says Associate Professor Frost.
"Yet in 2006, Carlton was obliged to seek financial assistance from the AFL to enable the club to trade legally for the rest of the season.
"For most observers, Carlton's decline is attributable to a series of decisions made by the administration of John Elliott, who was club president from 1983 to 2002," he says.
While acknowledging the negative impact of those decisions, Associate Professor Frost also argues that the club's decline coincided with a decisive shift in the economic and organisational structure of Australian Rules Football from a sport in which several leagues competed for players and revenue, to one built around a more monopolistic, nationwide competition.
"The Elliott administration's attempts to resist these changes, by taking a series of gambles with capital investment in its home ground and the payment and recruitment of players, has placed the club in a precarious position on and off the field," Associate Professor Frost says.
"Ironically, the salary cap and player draft, which Carlton considered to be against its best interests, now offer Carlton a realistic opportunity to rise again as a football power."
Associate Professor Frost is also the author of The Old Dark Navy Blues: A History ofthe Carlton Football Club (1998), and Immortals: Football People and the Evolution of Australian Rules (2005).
Football Fever: Moving the Goalposts, edited by Matthew Nicholson, Bob Stewart and Rob Hess, is published by Maribyrnong Press, RRP $39.95. It will be launched at the "Football Fever: Identities and Allegiances" conference held at Victoria University's Queen St Campus on Monday 25 September.
For further information, contact Associate Professor Lionel Frost on 9904 7068 or Ms Penny Fannin, Media Communications, on 9905 5828 or 0417 125 700.
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