Lions Coach Calls On Afl To Investigate Lottery System For Picks

The Age

Tuesday March 18, 2008

Nick Sheridan, With AAP

BRISBANE Lions coach Leigh Matthews has called on the AFL to investigate a draft lottery system in response to allegations that Carlton "tanked" last season in order to secure a priority pick.

Matthews said that while he supported the draft system, the issues arising from the priority pick - which is awarded to a club if it wins fewer than five games in two consecutive seasons - needed to be examined.

"The draft system is one of the planks of the competition. Most clubs over a decade or two have a chance of being a good team (because of it)," he said.

But Matthews said introducing a lottery should be investigated.

"I think all those things should be looked at," he said. "The draft has been such a good thing . . . but issues pop up and the administrators have to weigh up the good and the bad."

The latest calls for a review of the draft system have come in the wake of allegations by former Carlton assistant coach and Western Bulldogs Brownlow medallist Tony Liberatore that the Blues employed tactics to ensure they would not win five games last year, thus securing a priority pick in the end-of-season draft.

Liberatore made the allegations in an interview on Channel Nine's The Footy Show last week. Asked whether Carlton's behaviour last season - it lost its last 11 games - constituted "tanking", Liberatore said: "Personally, I would say yes."

AFL administrator Rod Austin and a member of the league's external legal counsel met Liberatore at his home yesterday to discuss the allegations.

A spokesman for the AFL, Patrick Keane, said the outcome of the talk would not be known until later today at the earliest, as the meeting transcripts must first be reviewed by the AFL operations committee before it formulates a response.

Liberatore declined to comment when he was contacted by The Age yesterday.

But Liberatore told radio SEN on Saturday that he did not intend to repeat his allegations if he was brought before the AFL.

"I mean, if they say to me, 'Do you think Carlton tanked?', I will probably say, 'I don't think they did'," he said.

AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou said that regardless of the outcome of yesterday's meeting, the league would not be reviewing the priority pick system this year.

"It's certainly not on the agenda this year, given that we don't like changing things mid-season and we certainly don't like changing it after a year and a half," he said, adding that he did not think this meant that tanking would stop being an issue.

"But I am sure it will be a topic for discussion and it will probably heat up at around about round 16 again this year."

Melbourne chairman Paul Gardner, whose club played the Blues in round 22 last year, said despite being aware of the suspicion surrounding Carlton at the time, he had not been concerned about whether the Blues were playing to lose.

"There had been a lot of speculation before the game, obviously," Gardner said yesterday.

"(But) we'd won so few games during the year that we were just delighted to get a win." -- With AAP

© 2008 The Age

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