15 July 2013

When football teams do strange things are we even understanding the game?

| johnboy
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We’re not naming names. Nor are we pointing fingers.

But The Economist this week has a story on the many ways sporting teams can be put to bad use by money men.

Worth knowing about.

Not that we’re saying we have any proof at all it happens in these parts.

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BTW, I assume that you have been betting on the gallops, the trots, and the dogs with the same amount of confidence. Like all sport, it’s completely above board.

Heh, heh.

HiddenDragon10:33 pm 15 Jul 13

Aside from potentially naughty things, about which I know ABSOLUTELY nothing, and without getting into sepia-tinted fantasies about the good old days when sportsmen were tradesmen Monday to Friday, and lived on the smell of an oily rag, it seems to me that if you pay people a lot of money regardless of what they achieve, chances are they won’t always try too hard. Very Australian, very, very Canberran.

LSWCHP, you are a true Strayan.

Well, I have never once in my life thought that things might be out of order in Australian professional sport. It has never, not even once, occurred to me that weird results all over the place caused by highly skilled professional athletes behaving like clumsy bozos could be the result of anything but sheer bad luck.

And all that money going around and around and around through the turnstiles and pokies and over the bars. All of it is totally squared away, accounted for and above board. I would never dream of suggesting otherwise. Not for a second would I suggest otherwise.

bundah, I think the word you are looking for is “misunderstood.” 😉

Come now, Mr Gatto is merely an honest businessman who is totally aboveboard 🙂

Well, well. I wander over to a news website from here, and what do I find?

http://www.news.com.au/national-news/victoria/outrage-as-gatto-business-partner-makes-play-for-croatian-soccer-club/story-fnii5sms-1226679303608?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer0264a&utm_medium=twitter#mm-registernews

From the article:

“A BUSINESS partner of underworld figure Mick Gatto has launched a bold bid to buy an international soccer club that has sparked an angry backlash from locals.

Matt Tomas, who owns Elite Cranes with Gatto, is looking to buy Croatian side Hajduk Split FC, one of the country’s premier football teams.

But the move has provoked a backlash from some locals who have raised Mr Tomas’s past as grounds to scupper the move.

Mr Tomas, once the chairman of the Melbourne Knights …”

These underworld characters sure love their sport!

Thanks JB, interesting article.

Well said, Growling Ferret. And I don’t think that the ACT government is the only one that has been taken to the cleaners by these professionals. Upgrading facilities for sports which are multimillion dollar concerns at taxpayer expense has been going on for a very long time all over the country.

We in Australia have the added dimension of links to licensed clubs and pokies in the mix. A licensed club is a wonderful way to launder money, employ people on high salaries to do little or nothing, award contracts to mates etc. It’s so entrenched that in one case – the Cronulla Sharks club and the APIA Club – the personnel involved found that their (ahem) skills were easily transferable from rugby league to soccer.

Growling Ferret12:30 pm 15 Jul 13

The scam in the ACT is must more transparent.

Commandeer community facility for professional football club.
Use it as a training/admin facility for a while.
Suggest its not up to scratch.
ACTGOVCO subsidises development of new training/admin facility.
Distribute plans to subdivide now redundant community facility.
Threaten to move ‘franchise’ interstate.
Subdivide community facility and privatise the profits.

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