While the AFL is grappling with the ramifications of a Federal Court decision last week which effectively gives Optus the green light to show AFL games on a two-minute delay - thereby imperilling the $153 million deal it has cut with Telstra - a less important media development has been all but ignored.

It concerns the revamping of the league's media arm, AFL Media, which over the course of the past six months has been strengthened, beefed up and given a significantly more powerful mandate.

Now, AFL Media will be the centralised news service that runs AFL Films, prints the Footy Record, publishes the AFL website, afl.com.au, and in time could well film every AFL match, which would then be bid for by the free-to-air and subscription TV networks.

Those jobs that had previously been farmed out to third parties will now be brought in-house and operate under the new, generously-proportioned AFL Media umbrella. In doing this, the AFL is aiming to reclaim all its intellectual property.

Soon, every snippet, soundbite and snapshot to emerge from AFL House will be branded with the AFL watermark.

Now the biggest and most powerful sporting organisation in this country will be able to control its message and promote its brand even better and become that little bit more powerful still.

It is in this spirit that the league has embarked on a plan to give its website a much 'newsier' edge, so that it rivals the online offerings of Fairfax (The Age and SMH) and News Ltd (Herald Sun, The Australian, Brisbane Courier Mail etc). They want afl.com.au to be the first port of call for footy fans - not just Dream Team devotees.

And to attract more readers, they're committed to providing a much edgier site with strong news and outspoken views. In short, they want to take the papers on at their own game.

So they've gone on a recruiting drive, beefed up numbers of reporters and editors at the site and - most significantly - have asked the 18 AFL clubs to help them in their quest to make afl.com.au more relevant and 'newsy'.

This mini-revolution has been going on at AFL headquarters for the best part of a year, and could yet shake up the established footy order, yet we've heard barely a peep about it.

(Now, as per the disclaimer below, I should acknowledge I was interviewed (unsuccessfully) for an AFL Media position late last year, so the detail of those discussions must remain confidential. But what is a matter of public record, in the tidbits of information leaked out into the public domain already, is the detail I've outlined above.)

The first public murmurings of discontent about these plans came in last Monday's Age when Jon Pierik detailed how the AFL clubs were becoming increasingly concerned by the AFL's insistence that the clubs come to afl.com.au - rather than the newspapers - with news stories and tips.

According to Pierik: ''AFL Media has ticked off clubs over summer for handing exclusive stories to newspaper outlets.''

If this is right, and the media is increasingly marginalised by the AFL, stand by for a major stoush. Nothing gets in the way of the Herald Sun and a decent footy yarn.

This development raises a number of questions, chief among them: Why is the AFL doing this? Why antagonise the media? And since when do the newsmakers - the sporting organisations that put on the game - become the newsbreakers as well?

It's a nonsense idea that is bound to give rise to myriad conflicts of interest.

How would the revamped afl.com.au cover sensitive issues such as the Etihad Stadium surface, or the exorbitant price of food at AFL venues, or Jason Akermanis' ramblings, or even the brouhaha that erupted several years ago when Andrew Demetriou chose to attend the opera ahead of an Essendon-Geelong final?

If it only publishes the AFL-endorsed good news then, like Pravda or any other state-run news agency, it will always have credibility problems.

There was another paragraph in Pierik's story which jarred: ''It is understood one senior AFL official has told clubs it is no longer acceptable for traditional media outlets that do not directly financially contribute to the league to dominate the news agenda.''

While the newspapers mightn't tip bucketloads of money into AFL coffers - although News Ltd has long been a commercial partner of the league - is this senior official seriously saying they don't contribute to the financial wellbeing of the code?

Allen Aylett, in his days as chairman of the VFL in the early 1980s, used to say the daily metropolitan newspapers provided millions of dollars worth of free publicity to the game each season. He understood the symbiotic relationship between league and media and how that delicate ecosystem was best left untouched.

Let's see how our senior official reacts if The Age, Herald-Sun and Australian chose to boycott the AFL for a week and not run one word of footy copy. He might get a better feel for the media's contribution to the game then.

(Disclaimer: Charles Happell was interviewed for the AFL Media's Head of Content position last year but was not selected.)