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The late, great Australian cricket superstar Shane Warne was one sporting legend who knew how to get the best value from a sponsor.

One can only imagine what Warnie would think of the woke debate fired off this past week by the national netball and cricket teams and an AFL side over sponsors they don’t like.

This is a firestorm that threatens to become a very slippery slope for our most popular spectator sports and threatens to decimate the sponsorship dollars tipped into sport.

If these virtue signallers get their way, elite sport in this country will be in serious financial trouble.

Back in 1999 the then Test vice-captain – Warne – was five days away from delivering on a promise to quit cigarettes made to global smoking product company Nicorette.

Shane was the global face for Nicorette’s cigarette quitting chewing gum and was being paid, back then, a whopping $200,000 to give up. Sadly for Shane a British tabloid photographed him in the Boat Yard Nightclub in Barbados having a smoke.

Threatened with an ambush picture of him, Shane confessed his crime saying he had only smoked once in those 40 days, and Nicorette – presumably after looking at the booming sales of the gum – paid Shane in full.

Sadly, once the $200,000 was in his pocket Warnie went back on the smokes and controversially was allowed to smoke as a contestant on Ten’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.

But Shane, better than most, understood the link between a sports star, a popular sport, fans and products that businesses want to promote. After all, Shane was managed during his career by legendary manager Austin Robertson

Robertson was an ex-VFL star turned manager turned promoter and World Series Cricket pioneer and right hand man to the legendary Kerry Packer.

These legends would not believe the shortsighted, attention seeking we have seen this week from some of our netballers, Australia’s current Test captain Pat Cummins and bunch of deluded Fremantle Dockers’ celebrity supporters.

Let’s start with Pat Cummins. He has now decided he doesn’t like Cricket Australia’s major sponsor — energy company Alinta — despite in the past appearing in their ads. He’s now refusing to do so.

He has denied his views influenced Cricket Australia to end prematurely a $40 million, four- year deal. It couldn’t have helped though.

Alinta, in its defence, points out its work on developing a giant solar project and its funding of research into battery storage technology. What’s Pat got to say about that, I wonder?

And no one should ever forget Alinta stepped in with its massive sponsorship deal when others deserted the cricket team after sandpaper-gate.

Netball Australia’s sponsorship dramas are even harder to fathom. The competition is in a financial mess and the national team, the Diamonds, is lucky to be on the court.

Player complaints about a financial deal worth $3.5 million a year from billionaire Gina Rinehart should be ignored by the people running the game.

Rinehart tips millions into Aussie sport, including Olympic swimming and rowing programs that has seen significant success in those two sports.

Refusing to wear a uniform with Hancock Prospecting on it is petty and could be fatal for the sport.

Naturally, once one or two sports go down this road, then the pile on begins with all sorts of worthy crusaders jumping on board.

By week’s end a bunch of AFL Dockers celebrity types including author Tim Winton and ex-WA Premier Carmen Lawrence were calling for Fremantle to dump major sponsor Woodside Energy.

And guess what? Club president Dale Alcock told Perth radio this week the mining giant’s deal, due to end in 2023, might not be renewed.

The wider AFL community should be watching this sponsor naming and shaming breakout with alarm.

Energy companies are the financial backbone of many of the AFL teams’ finances.

The West Coast Eagles’ main sponsor is Australia’s biggest miner BHP. Also on its books is a company called Barminco, described as the world’s largest underground mining services company.

Port Adelaide’s main sponsor is global energy company GFG owned by Indian billionaire Sanjeev Gupta, another mining giant and steel making company.

How long before some EV vehicle loving Geelong fan objects to having Ford on board, let alone Viva Energy, another sponsor that makes, imports and blends fossil fuels and bitumen?

The Sydney Swans love a cause but are happy to take sponsorship dollars from Arab airline Qatar, and its questionable attitude to homosexuality, plus Chinese owned bank HSBC and Origin Energy.

You see my point. And I haven’t even started on the AFL itself and its addiction to gambling sponsors.

All the companies mentioned here employ millions of Australians. Mining underpins Australia’s wealth,and we would be a third world backwater without it.

Sport is an Aussie religion and needs money to support elite competition and fund grassroots sport developing new champions.

To demonise people like Gina Rinehart and Alinta is easy. Finding sponsor money to replace them will be a lot harder.

A glance at this year’s Grand Final teams Geelong and the Sydney Swans shows where this woke protest advocacy might end.

Take Geelong and its long-time major sponsor Ford, that produces the globe’s biggest gas guzzling V8 utilities.