SADLY, very sadly, Channel Seven has hijacked the AFL after-match press conferences and set up a terrible sideshow with Carlton coach Michael Malthouse.

Not satisfied with having first rights to interview AFL coaches and players after a game, particularly on Friday night, Seven now has begun dictating terms on the “fifth quarter” sessions with the coaches that were once reserved for print journalists then invaded by radio stations (that never send a commentator to ask a question) and now reaching ruin with Channel Seven.

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Mark Stevens’ soap-opera battle with Malthouse is doing Seven no favours and has reached the point where the old guard of print journalists — those who remember when the post-game with an AFL coach had no microphones and allowed for some meaningful on and off-the-record questioning — needs to draw the line on this mess.

Stevens is no Robinson Crusoe. Some of us have memories of the AFL sending a staff of three minders to form a barrier in Canberra when the league feared how a press conference with then Port Adelaide coach Mark Williams would unfold in a pre-season game. And Gary Ayres when he was Adelaide coach ...

Malthouse can be a demanding coach in the fifth quarter. Ask a dumb question and there will be the stare and the response that will turn the interviewer into stone. Ask a question that prompts some thinking and the game’s longest-serving coach will offer thought-provoking content. The contrast between perception and reality is highlighted by Malthouse’s enlightening weekly appearances on Radio FIVEaa.

After last week’s RIP — that highlighted how the AFL coaches brought up their wish to get rid of the substitute from the interchange bench when they met at new AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan’s house for that curry dinner — Malthouse told FIVEaa on Tuesday of his vision of a six-man interchange bench.

At Adelaide Oval on Friday night — when Malthouse lost captain Marc Murphy with concussion in the second term and was forced to keep Chris Yarran on the field while he hobbled with a calf injury — Malthouse’s vision on interchange rotations, substitutes and the size of the interchange bench was far more fascinating from his press conference than the continuing saga with Seven and Stevens.

Seven’s bosses should listen to that press conference and realise how everyone would be better off if Malthouse was allowed to answer meaningful questions.

And in case you were distracted by the silly side show, consume these thoughts from Malthouse after he was asked and offered his views on the interchange debate put up in last week’s RIP and made more relevant at the Oval on Friday night: “I argued this case in 1985 in my second year (as coach at Footscray) and they all looked at me like I was a man from wherever.

“I don’t suspect for one moment it will ever get near that (six interchange players). But I think the way the game has gone, the power athlete today is greater than what he was yesteryear.

“The intensity of the game — we can make out whatever we like about us old players — the game is comprehensively better and comprehensively quicker and stronger. The rules don’t allow the game to stop too often. I certainly wouldn’t reduce the number of games in a year. But, without a shadow of a doubt, any game that is 80 minutes and ends up going for 50 per cent more (to 120) has a real problem in today’s environment for entertainment. That blows out games — and blows out players.”

media_camera Port Adelaide’s initial recruiting list included the Crows’ most famous forward, Hall of Famer Tony Modra.

MODRA TO PORT?

FOR much of the past 20 years — December marks the 20th anniversary of the SANFL being granted its second AFL licence — the football world has been waiting for the great defection between the Crows and the Power.

And with all respect to Ian Downsborough and Brett Chalmers, the moment did not unfold when they were swapped in the 1997 trade period.

Remarkably, the super defection was on Port Adelaide chief executive Brian Cunningham’s planning sheets in 1994. As he contemplated what he still regards as the worst recruiting concessions handed to an AFL expansion team, Cunningham wanted to make the chance to sign four uncontracted AFL players as “wildcards” recruits to make headlines and underpin the Power’s determination to challenge for a premiership as soon as possible.

Everyone knows of the secret meetings Cunningham had in Melbourne in the hope of securing Western Bulldogs key position player Chris Grant — and how the deal was brought to an end by a young Footscray fan (who still has not been sighted) busting his piggy bank to send his last 20 cents to Grant in an appeal to keep him at Whitten Oval.

But the stunning untold tale — among many that were taken off the secrecy list on Friday when former AFL chairman and chief executive Ross Oakley revisited Alberton to tell his account of the 1990 events that split SA football and brought national football to Adelaide — is how Cunningham’s recruiting list included the Crows’ most famous forward, Hall of Famer Tony Modra.

Cunningham revealed the Coleman Medallist spent an hour at his Alberton home to listen to the Power’s proposal to make him an inaugural Port Adelaide AFL player. And there was some unease for Cunningham as he saw Modra turn up in his Crows gear in a moment that would have secured Ray Titus a front-page photo across the nation to expose an ambitious recruiting dream from the AFL club-in-waiting.

The Power’s inaugural AFL president, Greg Boulton, also unlocked his vault to tell of the infamous SANFL league directors’ vote to endorse the formation of the Adelaide Football Club after Port’s ambitions to join the AFL was blocked in the Supreme Court. The final count was 8-3 in favour of the non-existent Crows. Naturally, Port Adelaide voted against the Crows being set up. But which SANFL clubs also voted no? Woodville ... and Glenelg.

Originally published as Channel 7 has hijacked the post-match interviews