Is it right that AFL boss, Andrew Demetriou, earns twice as much as the highest-paid footballer when in most big-time professional sport, the players are the recognised stars and the ones who take home significantly more than the administrators? The NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, for example, is paid US$10million a year (or he did until the current players' strike, when he chose to pay himself $1 a month), about a third of the highest-earning footballer, Indianapolis Colts' quarterback Peyton Manning, who receives US$14 million a season, plus the same again in endorsements.

How is it that Demetriou's salary has risen from $560,000 to $2,100,000 (an increase of 275%) since 2004, yet average player payments in that time have gone from $184,656 to $226,165 - an increase of just 22.5%?

How can football department expenditure at each club - and, of course, AFL revenue after the latest broadcast rights sale - have increased exponentially since the last CBA deal in 2006, while the clubs' 'spend' on players has remained constrained by the salary cap?

And how can those discrepancies and inconsistencies be convincingly explained away at this super-sensitive time when players and the league are at loggerheads over a watershed pay claim?

These questions, and many more besides, will be surely be addressed at Wednesday night's historic meeting of AFL players as they discuss their push for a bigger share of the revenue pie.

The meeting is expected to be attended by all 782 AFL players and is one of the most important exhibitions of player-power in recent AFL history. One senses a hardening of the players' resolve, and toughening of their stance, as negotiations with the AFL have hit a brick wall. Listening to Drew Petrie, Luke Power, Matthew Pavlich and other player delegates this past month and the message is clear: they won't be pushed around on this one.

It is expected that every player from the 18 club lists will be involved in the Melbourne meeting, either in person or via video links to Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, where the Players' Association will report on the state of negotiations over the next CBA. And then the group will vote on their next step.

Until recently, the players had little public sympathy with their claims - they want between 25% and 27% of the league's annual revenue - with supporters generally feeling that they were pretty well looked after by the sport.

The AFLPA had some support in Leigh Matthews - who colourfully described the players as 'serfs' in their relationship with their masters - and Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett, who wondered at the unwieldy bureacracy that the AFL had now become, its 400 staff now amounting to the administrations of five or six clubs.

But then the Saturday Age at the weekend splashed across its front page details of Demetriou's salary increases over the past seven years, against the players' pay rates over the same period. For Team AFL, it was an ugly set of numbers. In fact, it was a PR calamity, and no amount of spin doctoring from the league's PR department could disguise it.

Today, Carlton chief executive Stephen Kernahan threw his weight behind the players' campaign, saying they deserved their fair share of the league's revenue windfall.

I've no scientific data to bear out my theory, other than anecdotal evidence, talkback radio and readers' comments to online newspaper stories in The Age and Herald Sun, but I sense the worm is turning in the players' favour. (The comments in support of the players on The Age and Herald-Sun websites, for example, are now running at a ratio of almost three to one.)

One commenter on The Age website wrote: ''Demetriou is nought else but a rent on an Australian tradition. Put his job on the market at half the pay and it would be filled tomorrow by an equally competent administrator. I could find you dozens of people who could do his job at a fraction of the cost. On the other hand, I don't know where I'd find another Judd or indeed the top 25 on every teams' list. Demetriou and his parasitic cronies are expendable. The players are not.''

Another poster, Jeff, wrote: ''We love the game, the players are the game, overpaid office workers are not.''

Of course, there were many others who defended Demetriou's pay rise and the AFL's stance on this issue - and condemned the players for their greed. Many cited the league's handling of the recent billion-dollar broadcast rights deal as evidence that the game is in safe hands.

So the battle lines are set. Both sides will have to give a bit of ground to help resolve this issue, or it could conceivably end up following the industrial-action path that has blighted US sport in recent times and which threatens the next NBA season.

It will be fascinating, though, to gauge the mood of the meeting and to see the level of disenchantment among the rank-and-file. The AFLPA has so far steadfastly refused to countenance a strike - but it will be interesting to see tomorrow night how often the 's'-word is mentioned by the aggrieved workers themselves.