‘There’s too much money in local footy’: the bidding war for Aussie rules footballers

‘It is genuinely a second income for those 18 or so weeks,’ says Joel Dwyer, of being paid to play for minor teams. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

Joel Dwyer thought he was lost. It was his first Australian rules football game for a regional Victorian team that was paying him and two mates $700 each a week, and he’d never been to his new home ground.

As he drove through Victoria’s flat and desolate north, he saw no sign of a town that could support a football team.