FIVE years ago, as rumours of a Greg Westaway challenge circled the board of St Kilda, incumbent Saints president Rod Butterss was asked if running a football club was like running a business.
''It should be, but it isn't,'' Butterss replied. ''There's emotion in football, and that emotion clouds the business decisions.''
Such is the case with North Melbourne, which yesterday released an emotion-driven response to an article in The Age highlighting the club's parlous financial state.
Unfortunately for North, the emotional response - we call it emotional because it's not often a footy club press release singles out a journalist 14 times - has raised even more questions about the club's ability to continue as a going concern.
READ NORTH MELBOURNE'S RESPONSE IN FULL
The headline figure that rankled North so much was the fact that it had just $2749 in the bank when last year's accounts were closed off on October 31.
Chairman James Brayshaw - who, despite North's claims to the contrary, was not only contacted for comment but actually quoted in yesterday's story - took umbrage at the reporting of that number.
''There was no mention of the fact that a week later $1.5 million was in the same account,'' Brayshaw said.
''Football clubs draw down ferociously every month. It's like a credit-card cycle, that's how you operate. At any given time you might have $500,000 in there, you might have $1.5 million in there, you might have $2000 in there.''
In an email to all media outlets titled Financials: The facts, North Melbourne's media manager Heath O'Loughlin points out that 15 days after the $2749 balance was recorded, ''we had $1.1 million in the same account''. He adds: ''It is important to note that we pay our players and creditors on the second last day of the month and if you look at this account then, it will always be low.''
It's an admission that North Melbourne's bank balance of $2749 when it closed its accounts last year was not a one-off.
After salaries are paid, a near empty bank account is the norm. It makes Brayshaw's credit-card analogy pretty apt. The Roos are running on credit.
It must be said, the club is not hiding from the dire state of its finances. For the most part, yesterday's media release conceded that the report in The Age was correct on the majority of points.
North admits it ran up a $201,000 overdraft last year, admits that its auditors have flagged concerns about the club's financial viability every year since 2005, and admits that North will need more credit and an AFL guarantee of those loans.
''Yes, this [is] all true,'' read the club's statement. ''Our business plan is designed to address these challenges and again, we don't shy away from this.''
In the end, just two points from a list of 10 raised by the club require further attention. The first is the reporting of the club's ''current assets'' as ''assets''.
The original copy filed was correct. The word ''current'' was deleted in production. For that we apologise, but the picture is still not good for North. For the record, North Melbourne's current assets have fallen from $4.2 million in 2009 to $564,600 in 2010.
The final point that North takes issue with is the statement that senior figures at the AFL are concerned with the club's financial performance and handling of its negotiations with the Tasmania government to play home matches in Hobart.
''This is blatantly incorrect and disappointing,'' the club replied.
British philosopher Bertrand Russell once noted that ''the degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts''.
On that point, one thinks the Kangaroos protest too much.
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