Recently I bought an old Sekem footy jumper. I guess the main thing about Australian Rules football jumpers is that – unlike English Football shirts for which the sponsor, or the collar, or something changes every season (or two) so as to facilitate sales of new shirts (at 40 £ a pop) – Australian Rules jumpers change little from season to season. Geelong, for example, has had the same sponsor – Ford – since the introduction of sponsor logos on jumpers in the late 1980s. My club, though, St Kilda, seems to have had a new sponsor almost every season. I’m clearly among a minority of people who think walking around with SΛMSUNG or Vodafone plastered across your front just makes you look like an imbecile. But the sponsor logo is the only thing which indicates the era of the shirt, and sometimes it can come to signify less the company than the era or playing group which it references.

Whereas in recent years the AFL has come to be known as McDonalds football (especially at the Telstra Dome, where every game is the same), I have especially good memories of football in the early nineties. I have vivid recollections from when I was eight, nine or ten years old, of driving to Waverley when the footy record was smaller than A5 and cost 1 $, then sitting on the gaudy, wet wooden slats and watching Gary Ablett wrestle (prostrate) with Danny Frawley in the goalsquare, before going home with a headache having passively inhaled cigarette smoke all afternoon. With these memories in mind I resolved to find and attach an old sponsor’s patch to my jumper, and for some reason, I have remembered Philip Morris. Probably it is because the other brands that sponsored St Kilda were not as iconic (such as Snowdeli). Then again, as a nine year old, I had no idea what DRAKE, NUBRIK, ICI or SPICERS PAPER were, but those words came to define Melbourne, Essendon, Footscray and Collingwood respectively.

Of course, nowadays it seems absurd for a cigarette company to have been the sponsor of a football club. Philip Morris – now known as Altria – is the world's largest commercial tobacco company by sales, and

according to the Center for Public Integrity, Altria spent around 101 million $ on lobbying the United States Government between 1998 and 2004, making it the second most active organization in the nation.

Altria contributes to the furthering of opinions critical of the impact of global warming and climate change, through the funding of astroturf organizations such as The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition.

The above was a few days ago properly referenced in the Wikipedia article for Altria, but has nevertheless since been removed.

In the football records of the time, pictures of St Kilda players celebrating a win in their PHILIP MORRIS jumpers can be seen next to non-smoking advertisements featuring images of players like Fitzroy’s Alastair Lynch in a QUIT jumper. How can I justify having purchased a second St Kilda jumper (which wasn’t my size), only in order to obtain the Philip Morris patch, and attach it to my own jumper, when

Philip Morris knowingly lied about a product – tobacco – that led to addiction and killed their customers. The World Health Organization estimates four million people die yearly from tobacco-related illness. No-one has been tried for this conscious infliction of terrible hurt.

Well, it appeals because it references a bygone era. But I’m also trying to suggest something else here. In football there has been sponsorship by industries such as liquor (Carlton has had CUB as a sponsor; the Saints had Tooheys in the great Stan Alves era of 1997-1998), fast food (West Coast with Hungry Jacks, Brisbane with Coca-Cola) and motor vehicles (Adelaide – who were once known as the Camry Crows – with Toyota; Geelong – who last year won a premiership wearing Ford logos) when

Ford made a car (the Pinto) that exploded on impact. It had known this could happen, but preferred not to cut into its profits by recalling the car – paying damages to the victims was cheaper (121m $ versus 50m $). No-one was ever convicted for these deaths by immolation.

What I am trying to suggest is that there is no difference between the motives of the liquor, fast food, and motor vehicle industries and those of the tobacco industry. The detriment wrought upon human health and/or the planet by use of their products is comparable. I hope that in years to come we will look upon them in the same light as that in which Philip Morris appears now.