St Kilda president Andrew Bassat is confident his club will be able to remain competitive, even if most of their resources are going into keeping the club afloat.
The Saints will likely be one of the teams hit hardest by the COVID-19 financial crisis and will require AFL assistance to survive – money they will have to pay back.
Bassat believes St Kilda has the right people in place to navigate the difficult waters.
“Some of the things you do are trade-offs between this is what we must do to survive, but that doesn’t necessarily play well with us thriving,” he told SEN’s Whateley.
“We’re trying to reduce those trade offs as best we can. It’s about making sure we not only survive but thrive.
“It’s gotten a little bit harder, both with what’s happened with COVID-19 and also the new set of rules the AFL has put out there for now, but we’ll find our way.
“What makes me optimistic is not just being back at Moorabbin, having some really good people at the club running the club in all the senior positions gives me confidence we can find our way through any challenge.”
Bassat said he has been assured by the AFL that when they get through this process, they will be making sure all 18 teams are looked after equally.
“For now the AFL is pretty much not applying the competitive balance principles that they have to apply to make this a competitive league and stop it being eight clubs that can win a flag and 10 making up the numbers, but now they’ve chosen not to do this,” he said.
“What I wanted to make sure is that if they don’t restore competitive balance at the end of this period, that’s exactly where we would end up.
“The AFL has given us assurances that absolute competitive balance is part of the future, but for now they needed to go a different way to get over this blip.
“The risk is that this is the start of the process of some of the richer clubs being heard more loudly and a reduction in the commitment to competitive balance.
“I’ve been assured that’s not the case. This is a pragmatic decision to get through the current period.
“The need for competitive balance to address the fact that some clubs have stadium deals that others do not have. Some clubs get eight marquee games and others get zero.
“That makes sense from a maximising the size of the pie point of view, but if you don’t then distribute things like television revenue equally, you get to a world where you have a very unequal competition and the AFL has assured us that they’re committed to that.”