Commonwealth Bank Trophy - Competition

Competition

The Trophy was an eight-team, single division round-robin competition, based around a fourteen week season starting in May and ending in August. The top four teams played off in a knockout finals series, culminating in the Grand Final in the first week of September. While crowd turnout fell short of that in the three football codes, matches were generally attended by several thousand people, with a record crowd of 13,436 being achieved in 2004. This has necessitated a shift to larger venues, with smaller suburban venues of earlier years having to be abandoned in favour of larger city arenas. A significant number of games were shown both on free-to-air ABC TV and on pay television.

While the Commonwealth Bank Trophy was an elite competition, it lacked the attention and sponsorship of the three main football codes. This means that there was not the money to pay high player wages - indeed, according to Australian Workers Union National Secretary Bill Shorten, many earned less than $4,000 a year from the sport. This means that the vast majority of players - including most of those in the Australian team - juggled training and game requirements with part-time or full-time employment, and raised their own funds if they were to afford added assistance such as the services of a physiotherapist. In an attempt to address this somewhat, most players in the competition made the decision to join the Australian Workers Union in late 2005. The Union changed its registration rules to allow this to occur.