Gee, tricky time to be a sports marketer, isn’t it?

Just when you think you’ve landed that ground breaking deal to keep your sport and its increasingly precious star attractions in the style to which they’ve become accustomed, you get: “Yeah, nah… not really keen on that company – it doesn’t align with my personal values. What else ya got?”

First our national netball team, the Diamonds, refusing the hand-up and hand-out of billionaire businesswoman and philanthropist Gina Rinehart, on account of something her dinosaur father Lang Hancock said in 1984 – roughly 20 years before most of the current cluster of players were born. But hold that thought.

Days later, Cricket Australia confirms the role our national (men’s) captain Pat Cummins played in the termination of a $40 million sponsorship deal with energy company Alinta, on the grounds it clean bowled his clearly articulated, increasingly well practiced environmental stance.

And late in the week, a bunch of high profile, non-playing, scarf wearing, sit in the grandstand-type Dockers members call for the termination of Fremantle’s association with Woodside Energy, accusing the gas giant of trying to extend its social licence on the back of the club. And the players. And the great game of AFL. In other words, strike while tempers are running hot.

Take a pew, people. This might take a while to unpack.

Let’s start by drilling down into the conflicted corporate conscience of netball, a sport it needs to be pointed out is currently in a $4.5 million financial hole. Don’t understand how, but it is, with spending in the last financial year exceeding income by $4.368 million.

So here are the Diamonds, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, drowning. But when Gina arrives in her luxury motor launch to rescue them, they refuse to grab the life raft. They wave her away.

Rinehart has already rescued other sports – rowing, swimming, volleyball. Perhaps our netballers are waiting for a wind powered vessel?

I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but I’ve checked the commercial radar – there ain’t a lot of other rescue craft in the immediate vicinity. What’s Plan B?

But let’s move onto cricket, and our carbon neutral national (men’s) captain Pat Cummins, insistent that he’s no longer comfortable having the Australian team’s brand associated with a company with such a flagrant disregard for the environment.

It might be an inconvenient time to raise this, but isn’t this loosely the same mob who four years ago dragged the good name of our national carrier Qantas through the mud, by trying to blatantly cheat in South Africa?

Selectively short memories. I would have thought a little more humility was in order, for say the next 40 years.

While contemplating the dismissal of Alinta’s $15 million a season contribution, I couldn’t help but wonder what somebody like Allan Border would have been thinking. His last ACB contract was $90,000. For the season. That’s roughly what our current stars earn in a single innings of an Indian Premier League T20 match.

AB never had a social or political agenda. He just played cricket. He wore the baggy green with untold pride, grit and determination. Bit of a dinosaur really.

Forcing myself to look through a more youthful, woke lens, I can muster respect for Pat Cummins, and his intransigence on a point of principle. He’s an impressive, intelligent individual, and his passion is admirable.

Besides, it wasn’t that many years ago that a major dilemma for an international cricketer – outside the scarcity of runs and wickets – was not being able to access the wi-fi when they arrived at their five star hotel. Or not being granted admission to the first class lounge at the airport. Seriously.

But there are as many holes in Cummins’ defence as there were in the defence of the English openers in the 2020-21 Ashes series. Never mind the Range Rover he drives – has he thought about day/night cricket? You know, played under lights?

The predicament for professional sport, in the virtue signalling world in which we live, is that practically every corporate partnership in existence is potentially offensive. To somebody, at some level.

Let’s explore the social ills of gambling. Most major sports have a lucrative partnership with at least one betting agency, and takes a commission from the turnover of the others.

What about the damage the gambling companies are doing to our social fabric? On the night of State of Origin 3 back in 2016, I vividly remember my (then) eight year old son asking “What are the odds, Dad? Where Joel Caine?”

But gamble responsible, people. Bet with your head, not over it.

Alcohol sponsorships. There’s your primary cause of domestic violence right there. Not to mention alcoholism. Fast food? Intrinsically linked to obesity, diabetes and heart disease. What’s the deterioration of adolescent health costing the community?

Furthermore KFC – you know they kill chickens? McDonalds, cattle. The animal welfare people can’t be happy about that. Banks? They’re all morally corrupt, just like those filthy energy companies, trying to purge their guilty conscience by investing in sport, and pretending they care about the community.

Regardless of who sponsors what, in 2022 somebody, somewhere, is going to be indignant.

I know it’s outside their pay grade, but do our professional athletes fully appreciate just how hard it is to land a $10 million sponsor? How rare that scale of financial support is in Australia?

No chance. Most (men) have only ever flirted fleetingly with the real world. They’ve been batting and bowling or shooting hoops since they were five.

Taking it a step further, if we ban banks, alcohol companies, gambling, energy, mining etc – remove them all from the sponsorship pool – who’s going to fill the void?

The “government”? Us – the tax payers? More likely, nobody.

And where’s that pain going to be most felt? At the grassroots level. Mums and Dads will be paying even more for little Johnny and little Jenny to take the field or the court. Beyond that, lower investment in grassroots, poorer long term performance. It’s a proven cycle.

Nobody is denying the likes of Pat Cummins and Donnell Wallam and others the right to protest. But they’re contracted athletes, playing team sport. If they feel that strongly about the unfavourable terms of their employment, they can always vote with their feet. Go play an individual sport, where they have total control of their own destiny.

In recent years, Australia has become the world leader in oppose and object, the only plausible reason being that we have it so bloody good in this country, we have nothing else to whinge about.

But we’re approaching a point of no return.

As a sports loving nation, we need to be very careful what we wish for.