GC 17 and AFL in general

So my spies at Carrara on Saturday night tell me the ground announcer was spruiking the return of St Kilda superstar Nick Riewoldt to the coast to play for the new team.
As an avid and dedicated St Kilda and Nick Riewoldt supporter I must say I was horrified at the very least. Not only because the announcer (whom I'm informed was Becs from Sea FM's drive time show Ant and Becs the Benchwarmers) would have no idea if that were true, but also because he's misleading the public as well as not knowing what the hell is going on and totally disregarding everything Nick has said in the press.

Nick Riewoldt is contracted with St Kilda until 2010. After that, because he has been playing for 10 years he is considered a vetran player. What that means for St Kilda is they only have to include HALF of his salary under the salary cap. This effectively means that St Kilda can pay him DOUBLE what they are paying him now and it will still count as the same as what they are paying him in terms of staying under the salary cap. Get it? They can DOUBLE his salary. I doubt the GC 17 consortium could afford to do that.
Which means St Kilda can offer him a shitload to keep him.

But we're forgetting one major thing. He has said, on numerous occassions that he wants to be a one club player, and you can't do that playing for more than one team....

So Becs, I suggest you check your facts.

Also, in regard to more general things regarding the GC 17 consortium, they can't play out of Carrara with it being in the state it is. As if the lights going out didn't prove that enough. Coincidently I'm told that the lights went out because a punter turned off the generator that was powering that particular tower, which was not connected to the general supply because the connection was damaged two months ago.
Now our wonderful Mayor (who I didn't vote for) is a Melbournian by birth and one would assume famillar with AFL, and yet, he let's an AFL team play in a dilapitated stadium which can't even get a proper power supply for the lights.
The State Government isn't doing anything to help the situation by refusing to contribute to the upgrade of Carrara, instead insisting that any Gold COast team play out of the Gabba in order to pay off the Gabba's debts.
This move by Ms Bligh and her band of merry men is killing the bid of the GC 17 consortium, as no Gold Coaster in their right mind would travel to Brisbane to watch a Gold COast team play their home games when there's already a Brisbane team playing out of the same ground.
Effectively they're saying Geelong (which is about the same distance out of Melbourne as the Gold COast is out of Brisbane) should play their home games at the Telstra Dome or the G, instead of playing their home games out of Skilled Stadium.
It's crazy and I thought a government as money hungry as Ms Bligh's would be eager to bring more people to the fastest growing area of the state. I guess I was wrong.

And as a side note in the washup from Friday night's game, here's my thought.
It's easy to support successful teams such as Collingwood, who have a famous president and a lot of cash, but to support the least successful team in the league, St Kilda, takes character, guts and a lot of love.
I love my boys and win or lose, we'll always come out on top
xoxo