The 2013 AFL season was the 117th season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Australia, which was known as the Victorian Football League until 1989. The season featured eighteen clubs, ran from 22 March until 28 September, and comprised a 22-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top eight clubs.
The season was marred by a series of off-field controversies, with three clubs penalised in 2013 for separate infractions which had taken place over previous years: Essendon, following an Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority investigation into the club's supplements program; Adelaide, after illegal payments and draft-tampering charges relating to Kurt Tippett's 2009 contract extension; and Melbourne, after an investigation into allegations that the club had intentionally lost matches towards the end of the 2009 season.
Betts, Casboult, Duigan, Kreuzer, Robinson, Rowe, White
Goals
Brown 5, Green 3, Zorko 2, Bewick, Karnezis, McGrath, Polkinghorne, Redden, Rich
Gibbs, Simpson, Yarran, Kreuzer, Murphy
Best
Rich, Zorko, Hanley, Brown, Karnezis, Moloney, Merrett, Green
N/A
Injuries
N/A
N/A
Reports
N/A
Due to the unavailability of the Gabba because of cricket commitments, the AFL chose to schedule the match at Etihad Stadium rather than Metricon Stadium in Queensland, citing that the largest possible crowd would be drawn in Melbourne ahead of any potential game on the Gold Coast.[3]
Premiership season
The full fixture was released on Wednesday 31 October 2012.
For the second consecutive year, the AFL's opening round was spread across two weekends.[4]
None of the bottom five teams from 2012 (Western Bulldogs, Port Adelaide, Melbourne, Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney) featured in a Friday night match during the home-and-away season.[6][7] This is due to the AFL's policy of awarding Friday night matches only to teams that perform consistently throughout the season.
Melbourne scored 12.2 (74) in the final quarter against Greater Western Sydney, setting a new record for its highest score in any quarter in its history.[12]
The Western Bulldogs' final score of 4.4 (28) was its lowest in any game since round 16, 1996.[13]
Carlton's one point victory over Port Adelaide meant they finished the home and away season in 9th and subsequently replaced disqualified Essendon in the finals.
Assured of its third placed finish, Fremantle omitted eleven senior players to manage their fatigue for the finals, and consequently lost to sixteenth-placed St Kilda by 71 points. Following the season, the AFL formally clarified its integrity rules relating to such events: clubs could obtain permission on request to rest senior players at the end of the season, but the league would need to rule on a case-by-case basis that the club was not attempting to manipulate its finals draw.[28]
The qualifying final between Geelong and Fremantle was just the second final to ever be played in Geelong in AFL/VFL history, with the previous final occurring in 1897 at Corio Oval.
The International Rules Series was played between Australia and Ireland for the first time since 2011. For the first time, the Australian team was represented by the Indigenous All Stars.[81] As in previous years, two test matches were played, and the series was decided on aggregate. The series was held in Ireland, and was won by Ireland 2-0 and on an aggregate margin of 173-72 points.[82]
During the trade period leading up to the 2013 season, Adelaide Crows forward Kurt Tippett sought to be traded. During trade negotiations, information was uncovered which brought into question the legality under AFL rules of Tippett's 2009 contract extension with Adelaide. The AFL investigated Tippett's contract during October and November, and charged Tippett and Adelaide with a total of eleven charges relating to draft tampering and breaching the total player payments, including:[83]
Arranging a secret deal in which Tippett would be traded to a club of his choice at the end of 2012
Direct payments of $100,000 outside the salary cap in each of 2011 and 2012
Illegally arranging third-party deals in 2011 and 2012, resulting in Tippett receiving further money outside the salary cap in those years.
Adelaide was considered likely to incur a loss of draft picks, among other penalties, if found guilty, but the AFL Commission was yet to complete its hearing into the matter when the National Draft was held on 22 November 2012, so the club was permitted to participate in the draft as normal. However, on the day before the draft, the club voluntarily relinquished its highest two remaining selections (No. 20 and 54) as a "gesture of goodwill" ahead of the hearing.[84]
The final hearing took place on 30 November, and Adelaide and Tippett pleaded guilty to all charges. Adelaide was stripped of its first and second round draft picks, and banned from taking any father-son selections, in the 2013 National Draft, and received a $300,000 fine. Tippett was suspended for the 2013 NAB Cup and 11 premiership matches, with a further suspended sentence of 11 matches, and received a $50,000 fine. Several senior Adelaide personnel were also punished by the league: chief executive Steven Trigg and former football manager John Reid were each fined $50,000 and banned from AFL functions for six months (with a further suspended sentence of six months), and current football manager Phil Harper was banned from AFL functions for two months with a four-month suspended sentence.[83] In a separate hearing in January 2013, the AFL Players' Association revoked the accreditation of Tippett's manager, Peter Blucher, for at least one year.[85]
Throughout the 2012/13 offseason, the league investigated the Melbourne Football Club over allegations that it had tanked during the latter part of the 2009 season – that is, that it had intentionally lost matches near the end of the season so that it would finish with no more than four wins, and therefore receive a priority draft pick. The league released its findings in February 2013, and found the club not guilty of tanking.[86][87]
However, it did find two of Melbourne's then-senior staff members – senior coach Dean Bailey and general manager of football operations Chris Connolly – guilty of "acting in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the competition". This related most specifically to a meeting in July 2009, which became known colloquially as "the vault", in which Connolly allegedly openly discussed the potential benefits to the club of tanking.[88] The guilty parties received the following penalties:
Connolly, who was still at the club in 2013 but serving in a role outside the football department, was suspended outright from serving in any position at any club until 1 February 2014. Connolly was sacked by Melbourne in October 2013.[89]
Bailey, serving in 2013 as an assistant coach at the Adelaide Crows, was suspended from his position for the first sixteen weeks of the 2013 season, preventing him from having any contact with the Crows' playing group during that time.
The Melbourne Football Club, which was complicit to the infraction in its capacity as Connolly's and Bailey's employer, was fined $500,000.
None of Melbourne, Connolly or Bailey contested these penalties.[90]
While ASADA investigated the legality of the supplements, the AFL separately investigated the administration of the club's supplements program, and charged the club and senior staff with bringing the game into disrepute. The charges focussed on the poor business practices within the program, including allowing "a culture of frequent, uninformed and unregulated use of the injection of supplements" at the club, incomplete record keeping which had made it impossible to determine with certainty whether or not players had been administered banned supplements, and for failing to guarantee the health and safety of its players in its program. On 27 August, five days before round 23 and after two days of discussions between the club and the league, the following penalties were imposed relating to these charges:
Essendon was fined $2 million (staggered over three years); this was the largest fine imposed on a club in the history of Australian sport.
Essendon was ruled ineligible to participate in the 2013 AFL finals series, achieved by relegating it to ninth position on the ladder.
Essendon was stripped of draft picks in the following two drafts: in 2013, its first and second round draft picks were stripped; in 2014, it was stripped of the first and second round draft picks it would have received based on its finishing position, but was granted the last draft pick in the first round.
Senior coach James Hird was suspended from any involvement in any football club for twelve months, effective immediately.
Football operations manager Danny Corcoran was suspended from involvement in any football club for four months, with a further two-month suspended sentence, effective 1 October 2013.
Senior assistant coach Mark Thompson was fined $30,000.
Club doctor Bruce Reid had contested his charge at a hearing from the AFL Commission, which was on Thursday 29 August, 10:30pm EST.[93]
The scandal was investigated over the following years, and ended with 34 players who were on the 2012 Essendon list being suspended for the entire 2016 AFL season as part of a partially offset two-year suspensions for using thymosin beta-4 during the scandal.
Adam Goodes–Eddie McGuire racism controversy
Late in the final quarter of the round 9 match between Collingwood and Sydney, Adam Goodes became the target of racial abuse in which a 13-year-old Collingwood supporter called him an "ape".[94][95] Goodes pointed the supporter out to security following the incident, who subsequently evicted her from the ground; after the match, Collingwood president Eddie McGuire visited the Swans' rooms to apologise "on behalf of football", and stamped out that racism would not be tolerated by the Collingwood Football Club.[96][97]
Five days later, McGuire was involved in another controversy involving Goodes on his Triple M Melbourne breakfast show, when he joked that Goodes could be used to promote the King Kong musical that was to be held in Melbourne, quickly apologising on air after making the reference.[98][99] McGuire initially defended his comments by saying that the remark was simply "a slip of the tongue", but admitted to vilifying Goodes in an interview later in the day, albeit unintentionally.[100][101]
^Greenberg, Tony (30 September 2013). "Jackson jags Jack". AFL BigPond Network. Archived from the original on 3 October 2013. Retrieved 30 September 2013.
