From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

Dance like no one’s watching. While the headlines are about the breaking of the drought for the Richmond faithful and the dominance of the Melbourne Storm, the AFL and NRL grand finals both give an insight into how power and money work for those on the other side of the fence. The Olympic Room at the MCC was full of the country’s leaders and business bosses, but NAB chief Andy Thorburn gave that a miss, spending the afternoon in the company’s corporate box. A Crikey spy saw him having a boogie to Mike Brady’s Up There Cazaly before the first bounce, so perhaps he knew he’d have a better time away from the bigwigs.

Flagging concerns. The meeting of politics and sport was debated all last week, with performances by The Killers (with a Midnight Oil cover) and Macklemore with his hit Same Love continuing to show that neither sport nor politics exist in a vacuum. But the mix of the two was closely monitored at the MCG on Saturday, with the leader of the Rainbow Crows, an LGBTI supporter group for the Adelaide Football Club, saying the group had been told to stop flying flags that are a mix of the Adelaide flag and the rainbow flag. In a Facebook post, group leader Brett McAloney said:

“Yesterday at the AFL Grand Final late in the first quarter I had 5 or 6 security staff asked me out of my seat and to one side. I was informed that I was not allowed to wave my Rainbow Crows flag. As you can imagine this was both embarrassing if front of a large crowd of people eagerly watching on and intimidating with so many of them.”

The reason: only flags in team colours were allowed. After back and forth in which security were told that the flag had been waved at the MCG, Etihad and Adelaide Oval during the regular season, the decision was eventually made that the flag could continue being waved.

The MCG’s policy prohibits “flags with handles exceeding 1.6 metres”, but doesn’t say anything about what can be displayed on flags. The AFL conditions of entry to its venues says patrons agree  “not to wear or otherwise display commercial, political, religious or offensive signage or logos” or “distribute political, religious, advertising or promotional material” without the consent of the AFL. Last year, the AFL evicted members of the United Patriots Front who unfurled “Stop the mosques” banners at matches at the MCG and Subiaco Oval. After the Macklemore furore all week, it looks like MCG security was on high alert on Saturday.

AFR balls up. The staff at Australian Financial Review don’t often find much space for sport (outside of the business dealings of this owner or that), so Ms Tips could forgive the paper for not being completely across all the details when writing about this year’s grand final. However, in the paper’s Perspective section over the weekend — a profile of Richmond president Peggy O’Neal and the Crows’ Rob Chapman — was a fairly fundamental error we can’t believe no footy fan sub picked up on: swapping the teams’ captains. In an “AFL grand final by the numbers” table (as far we can tell, otherwise accurate), the Fin mixed up the Tigers’ Trent Cotchin and Adelaide’s Taylor Walker: 

 

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