WA and Qld Premiers Cancel AFL Grand Final Wager

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It’s a time-honoured tradition for state premiers keen to bask in some of the glory of major sporting events to offer light-hearted wagers to counterparts when their corresponding state teams reach the grand final.

But with less than a day to go until the Fremantle Dockers take on the Brisbane Lions at the big dance, WA Premier Roger Cook and Queensland Premier David Crisafulli look unlikely to make a bet with both men’s offices telling us how busy they were.

Cook has been in Vietnam this week on a trade mission, while Crisafulli has been busy putting a rocket up the bureaucracy in his state.

To be fair, being a premier is no mean feat, but starving poor political journalists of an angle during a week when the only thing anyone cares about is sport is a little rude in this writer’s opinion.

There have been some fantastic wagers between premiers over the past decade.

Ahead of the return of the AFL State of Origin game between WA and Victoria, Cook bet Premier-at-the-time Jacinta Allan a carton of their respective state’s best beer for the winner.

WA lost and Cook bought Allan a carton of Swan Draught. I don’t follow Victorian politics that closely, but I gather the rest of Allan’s year went swimmingly after that.

Last year Crisafulli accepted a bet from New South Wales Premier Chris Minns that the losing state in the NRL State of Origin series had to film a tourism add for the winning state.

New South Wales lost the best and upheld its end of the bargain with a tongue-in-cheek endorsement of the sunshine state as the home of what will be the second-best Olympics ever.

Back in 2018 when the Eagles took on Collingwood for the flag, former WA Premier Mark McGowan challenged his Victorian counterpart at the time Daniel Andrews to move the grand final to Perth.

“If the Eagles win [this year], it’ll go to Perth next year but if Collingwood win, it stays at the MCG,” McGowan said at the time.

The bet was rejected and the grand final will continue to be played at the MCG until the year 3000.

WA’s last Liberal premier Colin Barnett faced two years of humiliation.

The first in 2013 when he bet former Victorian Premier Denis Napthine to dress up in Dockers gear and hand out tourism pamphlets for WA in Federation Square if they beat the Hawks.

The Hawks won that year by 15 points and Barnett made good on his bet, donning a Hawks shirt and scarf and handing out Victorian tourism flyers in the Murray Street Mall.

He faced a similar fate in 2015 when the Eagles were smashed by the Hawks again.