"I hope Tom Scully stays at his club because everybody wants good young players to stay with their club. Having said that, it is incumbent upon the club who's got the good player to keep their good players."

That was AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou, quoted in Caroline Wilson's story on the strongly rumoured recruitment of Melbourne Demons star Tom Scully by Greater Western Sydney (The Age - 10/02/11).

Could there be a greater example of how easily wooed the AFL media is than the fall-out to this story?

Where has the grilling been of CEO Cameron Schwab and his administration/football department for not having had Scully under lock and key for next year and beyond?

This player is considered of such importance to the Demons that his possible - some say certain - defection has been compared by Herald Sun doyen Mike Sheahan to Ron Barassi's departure to Carlton in 1965 that "brought (the) Melbourne Football Club to its knees..."

Instead the reporting and conversation has been along the lines of the "naughty" Greater Western Sydney poachers stealing "our" best young player while the "baddies" at the AFL sit by and smugly let it happen.

The soft touch on the Melbourne Football Club and the media (in the main) missing Demetriou's valid point about how it's incumbent on the club to keep their good players, can easily be put down to how "matey" the club has been with the sport's Fourth Estate during the Schwab era.

Sure, the unbelievable effort of the Jimmy Stynes-led board to eradicate the millions of dollars of red-ink deserves all the praise it has received (as I wrote about when it was declared "debt-free" last August) while the president's personal, on-going, courageous and well-publicized battle with cancer has only added to the legend of one of the greatest success stories in the game's history.

But as far as the club's administration and football department is concerned, if Scully leaves the club, then frankly to use one of Eddie McGuire's favourite sayings, it's a case of too much icing and not enough cake.

Maybe the unveiling of a new logo, putting a darker shade of navy blue in their 2011 guernsey, drawing three new cartoon Demon logos, taking everyone on a 14-day trip to China and announcing a partnership with the Victorian Women's Football League, meant they didn't have time to sign up their best young player ....

Or maybe some of the journos who've covered the warm and fuzzy yarns and gone on the various junkets ... oops, sorry, I mean ''team-shaping journeys and life-enriching experiences that assist in turning youth into significant men of stature'', yadda, yadda, yadda, could have asked some slightly tougher questions towards well-paid administrators than they have to date?

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THERE was more silliness down at the St Kilda football club this week when the club thought they could front the media on their own terms because they were making an announcement about a community camp and visiting a retirement home.

Yes, media management and public relations as it was done in about ... oh I don't know ... say 1982? When you were under the pump, visit a hospital or school for a warm and fuzzy photo shoot and not give any quotes to "distract" from the important issue at hand like giving little Johnny a signed jumper because he won the local primary school spelling bee.

Good luck trying that one today, which of course is what the Saints did with the "photos and cameras only" visit.

"GAGGED!!! AFL NOT LAUGHING AT SAINT ANTICS" screamed two pages of the Herald Sun last Wednesday.

Gee, that went well.

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''THE THING that will make it special is that everything is performed live,'' he (Ben Elton) says.

It's how television was done in the beginning, of course, but these days it's a radical concept.

That was Karl Quinn from The Age Green Guide's in a fluff piece about the then up-coming Ben Elton "Live From Planet Earth" last week.

Yep that "radical concept" of live entertainment television in front of a studio audience hasn't been seen on a regular basis at Channel 9 since "The Footy Show" went off air last September, and will - in a month's time - begin its 18th consecutive year of top-rating prime time television.

And with my punting hat on, if you can get even money about Ben Elton not seeing the month out, I'd take it.

Of course it's a Green Guide edict that The Footy Show's enduring success is not to be acknowledged in any way, and any mention of it has to be an opinion piece written by a female writer who demands that Sam Newman be sacked.

In October 2009, it was Marieke Hardy's turn, and the paper gave her significant space to declare at the end of a 1000-word diatribe that Newman had to go, "because he's not in any way funny."

If the TV work of Hardy isn't as familiar to you as that of the show she slagged - that's won its timeslot for the past 17 years - here's a little help. Wikipedia says Hardy wrote and produced a 22 episode series called "Last Man Standing", which was axed after one season due to poor ratings, and is a regular panel member of ABC-TV's "First Tuesday Book Club."

So clearly now that Kerry Packer is no longer with us, we've found the most respected judge of television in the country.

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IT WAS great to see in the Herald-Sun how Channel 7's AFL department have gone back to their unoriginal ways with their brand-new and never-before-seen promotion of their AFL coverage ... that looks like a direct copy of TNT's NBA TV coverage in the States.

Before you say, "That's terrible. Why can't they come up with their own ideas?" consider that their "own ideas" have included "Live And Kicking," "Peter Hellier's The Bounce" & Ricky Olarenshaw.

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"Racetrack" Ralphy Horowitz is a former producer at "The Footy Show" "Sunday Footy Show" 3AW and SEN, and now works full-time in horseracing. Twitter.com/rtralphy