It might be the week the worm turned.

For an interesting tid-bit appeared in News Ltd papers on Monday that has gone largely unnoticed. Or if it was noticed, it certainly hasn't drawn much comment.

We had been led to believe, by many in the football commentariat and, of course, the AFL PR/media relations department, that the AFL players had little public support in their push for a greater share of the league's revenue pie.

They were in fact effectively being portrayed as money-grubbing mercenaries - though not in so many words, of course. Only Leigh Matthews, Jeff Kennett and one or two others who could be regarded as high-profile football figures put their hands up and said: whoa, hang on just a second everyone, perhaps the blokes who put on the show are entitled to a better deal.

Matthews colourfully decribed the players as 'serfs' in their relationship with their 'masters', the league.  

So the interesting snippet of news this week was contained in the Herald Sun/Channel 7 Footy Fans Survey, which covered all sorts of issues regarding the great game and attracted a record 46,000 responses.

One of the questions was devoted to the dispute between the players and the AFL over their pay deal. Should the players be paid more, it asked.

Well, an overwhelming 71 per cent of fans said, yes, the players should indeed get a greater slice of the pie. Which must have come as something of a surprise to AFL HQ, and the leading newspaper columnists who have fallen in behind the league on this issue.

Matt Finnis, and the AFLPA, might have run a pretty dowdy, unglamorous campaign - certainly nothing as slick as the AFL and its legal hotshots have put together - but they've played the ball, not the man, and the fans have responded. 

The mood at AFL HQ would not have been improved by the response to another question which asked whether AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou was worth the $1.8 million salary package he was paid.

The reaction was entirely predictable: of course people thought Demetriou was overpaid - in fact 73% of the respondents said his remuneration package was over the top. (Which tallied with some of the comments by BPL readers after a recent column on the issue.) 

Some were unkind enough to suggest a trained chimp could put his hand out and accept the money that the TV stations were willing to pay for the broadcast rights, but that was unfair.

Demetriou did not help his cause, or image, when he said in response to the survey, he ONLY received a salary of $1.3 million with the rest coming from bonuses and incentives. That must have played really well with Mr and Mrs Stringbag out in the burbs.

So, the campaign to demonise the players as greedy and selfish has fizzled, drawn a blank.

Then, on the Footy Show on Thursday night, there was an interesting postscript to that survey.

St Kilda midfielder Nick Dal Santo and Collingwood forward Chris Dawes were on the panel and discussing how Demetriou had spoken to the clubs and put forward his view that the AFLPA's push for a three-year deal with a fixed 25-27 per cent of all football revenue was unreasonable, and that some of their figures were inaccurate.

''It started off in regard to the AFL and how it's growing the game and then it turned into a bit of a CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) conversation," Dal Santo explained.

"He didn't name names but he did basically say that the figures that we had been told from our representatives, being the AFLPA, were inaccurate and they didn't have a great grasp of what's going on."

Asked if Demetriou was being disrespectful to the AFLPA, Dal Santo said: "I think it was, yes."

''If you are potting them (criticising the AFLPA), you are potting us as a playing group." 

Dawes said the players were right behind the AFLPA: "If he (Demetriou) is going to be criticising Matt Finnis, and he didn't name him at our club talk, in a way I think we as players should take offence to that. I don't think he's right that he's criticising us. From a players' point of view, it's not great."

So, what's this? Are the serfs now openly revolting? Will there be open rebellion? How will the boss man quell this threatened mutiny? Watch this space for the next instalment in this intriguing power play ...