Article in todays Sunday Times posed this question of the OOFTITS.
At risk of making one of Morgan's posts appear a short precis here are my thoughts.
In 1987 they came to be, I didn't get it,, I went to a couple of games but couldn't engage, the whole Indian Pacific set up left me cold and I stuck with Richmond in the VFL and Souths over here going to Wafl games and ignoring the budgies. t barracked for Geelong on the 1992 and 94 grand finals and found no pleasure in their success.
The dockers started in 1994, I joined straight up member number 5032, they made sense. They weren't corporate and belonged to where I thought I wanted to be.
Since then they have won 2 more flags, we are yet to win one.
BUT
We have the Len Hall game from 1997 2 years after we started we lobbied and won that right showing great support to those people who served to preserve our nation.
We partnered strongly with Starlight to provide funding to children with needs.
We set up the Next Academy and have shown great respect to our indigenous players and shown leadership in matters of racial and cultural diversity.
We set up our AFLW team early openly supported same sex marriage and LGBTI+ pride.
Ok we have made some mistakes, the Harris Rosich era had us looking like OOFTITs Lite.
The move the Cockburn I think has been a grave mistake and we have lost some of our local identity, the jumper change was badly handled and we have effectively lost our Member selected board members. Some players have been treated poorly.
Their culture of success lead to turning a blind eye to a rampant culture of drug abuse that has cost many young men dearly, the booing of an indigenous champion to the point he quit the game, the brother of 3 players feeling unwelcome because of his sexual orientation, the lip service given to indigenous round and now the total lack of respect top Pride round.
It goes beyond that, a popular and long time player develops serious concussion and is "retired" with such acrimony he doesn't even attend the press conference.
The excuse today is we have a broad range of members and so we don't want to upset them by supporting social causes.
Well OOFTITS you are judged by your actions or lack of them and the company you keep.
You can keep your four flags, I trust my team to keep its dignity and to do right by society that is worth 10 flags to me.
As Robert Walls once asked of us "What do you stand for" well the answer is dignity and inclusiveness.
What do the OOFTITS stand for other than success at all costs. With an ageing list and poor drafting good luck..YOu stand for nothing.
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