(Sean Walsh is a regular BPL contributor on soccer and AFL.)

Condescending comments from AFL head office matched with an increasingly belligerent Players' Association has the negotiations for the next Collective Bargaining Agreement heading into uncharted waters. 

Australian sport has rarely been afflicted by the industrial unrest we have seen recently in the bigger professional international sports, particularly the NBA and NFL. But it is no surprise that the AFL is the first to encounter significant player militancy in this country. 

They are in effect a victim of their own success - a point rammed home by the recent media deal and corresponding reportage of the CEO's hefty annual salary. 

To determine how the altered balance of power may affect AFL and other Australian sports, it may be instructive to look at the international picture.

Globally, there are two ways sporting competitions are organised. 

The first is a free-market system, best illustrated by soccer. This system allows clubs to pay the market rate for players and let the buyer beware. 

The advantages of this system are that the chances of significant industrial action by players is limited. Players' Associations are focussed on attempting to impose minimum standards on employers, with limited success in off-broadway leagues (Romania and Indonesia, we're looking at you). 

The disadvantages are that, over time, the stronger clubs are likely to dominate. The Scottish Premier League and La Liga are prime examples of what you don't want your sporting competition to become (ie. a perennial two-horse race).

It also results in frequent financial problems for clubs paying beyond their means, chasing titles or attempting to punch above their weight. 

As a result a second system has been developed. Surprisingly, this salary cap/draft method has come from the home of the free market, the USA.

Salary caps and drafts assist more clubs to be competitive with the trade off being protracted negotiations with players twice a decade. (Baseball has a bet each way and gets the disadvantages of both systems and little of the advantages). 

This second system applies, of course, to the AFL. 

The NFL has in the last week barely avoided a lockout-affected season.  Both sides appeared to look over the edge of the precipice and decide it was better to compromise and equally share the fortune their game creates rather than shut down a season. Players like to get paid and owners don't like paying for empty stadiums.

The NBA has just entered its own lockout and their industrial environment could only be described as toxic. Few expect an early resolution and the coming season is in serious jeopardy. 

This is the cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face alternative that all those in the AFL system will tell you we are light years away from. But I'm not so sure. 

To show the impact of such a scenario, we must turn to the NHL and MLB experience. 

The MLB encountered the doomsday scenario first. The 1994-95 work stoppage cost the league approximately one third of the season and the post-season was cancelled. 

A case can be made that this pivotal moment still haunts the MLB. Baseball went from being the national pasttime (much like Test cricket here) to just another sport played by the greedy in the employ of the gluttonous.

Despite seeing the damage wrought to baseball, the NHL somehow found itself in a similar industrial crisis in 2004. They cancelled their season with similar results to the MLB.  Fans migrated to other sports but more importantly so did networks: ESPN showcased professional Poker and started a craze.

From 1999-2004, ESPN paid an average of US$120million a year for NHL rights. Last season's rights holder Versus paid US$77.5million.  At a time when other sport's media rights grew exponentially, the NHL took a huge hit that it is only now starting to recover from. 

Damage of a similar degree to the AFL's media rights would cripple the game.

Since the creation of the AFL, each wage negotiation has shifted a little more power to the player side of the equation.  Those of an optimistic nature might hope that the AFL and its players actually learn something on their frequent trips to study US Sports. 

The likely damage to the AFL from a work stoppage would be catastrophic due to the crowded football market in Australia compared to the US. 

The AFL knows this and should force them to tone down their current paternalistic rhetoric.

Conversely, the players would do well to note that, unlike the US examples, AFL is built on a membership structure which means that, when push comes to shove, fans' loyalty will ultimately reside with the clubs.

Everyone would do well to take a deep breath and rethink their negotiating tactics.