It happened because someone working for, or on behalf of, the AFL saw fit to impose upon a great sporting occasion by adding sound effects. Of the banal sort that might otherwise be heard in a computer game, they ceased only when the ball was bounced and the game was actually in motion. What was thereby blotted out was the grand final's great intangible - the atmosphere of the day.

It had never previously occurred to me that anyone would presume they had the right to interfere with the grand final in this way. No club had suggested the change. There was no push among football supporters for it. There had been no public discussion about whether this was a good idea and something that people actually wanted.

No, it happened because someone charged with marketing or promoting the AFL saw the grand final as an opportunity to do just that. In a column I wrote at the time, I warned that we were starting down a slippery slope that would lead to each goal being met with blasts of loud music. What is being lost is the right of individuals to enjoy the game in their own way.

AFL football cannot be characterised solely as corporate sport, but what happened on grand final day was an expression of corporate thinking. But the AFL doesn't own the game. They are servants of the game. The question of who owns football is a very important one and something that now needs to be discussed. Who is serving whom?

If you want to see corporate values in sport at the cutting edge, follow the English Premier League. A recent example - Arsenal. Arsenal is not like the AFL - it's owned by shareholders, the biggest of whom is American sports tycoon ''Silent'' Stan Kroenke. Relative to other cowboy capitalists who have bought into the EPL, Kroenke seems a remarkably decent individual. He didn't fund his purchase of two-thirds of the club's shares through debt and then require the club to pay off the debt for him, as happened - scandalously - at Liverpool and Manchester United.

But Kroenke was booed at the Arsenal AGM when he refused to say that he would not take a dividend out of the club at the end of a financial year when Arsenal sold its captain and best player, Robin Van Persie, to Manchester United. In an interview, Kroenke said the matter of owners taking money out of sports clubs was simply not an issue in the US. But why is it assumed that in matters of sport the US is the future? It is simply one version of the future which we are free to choose depending on whether it suits our needs and values.

Now Englishman Paul Sergeant has waltzed into town and, in his capacity as the new boss of Etihad Stadium, announced that the AFL should look to the EPL and NBA basketball for inspiration. He was quoted as saying: ''The whole experience of going to an NBA game blows your socks off because they make use of the arrival experience, the video boards, the monitors around the venue, the PA system.''

Blows your socks off?! For a garish, one-dimensional, routinely over-the-top spectacle, the NBA certainly leads the way. Sergeant's rationale could be used to argue that the National Gallery would get more visitors if it converted into a franchise of Disneyland.

The AFL has taken a series of decisions which have made televised broadcasts of games increasingly attractive as against going to matches. Now, in a bid to have their cake and eat it too, the game is at risk of being seriously debased.

For 150 years, Australian football has enjoyed a popularity that is, by global standards, a phenomenon. For 150 years, the excitement induced by the game has been self-sustaining. Now people with no proven interest in the history and culture of the game are moving to change it before our eyes. If followers don't stand up and make their voices heard, it's going to happen.