Forty-five years ago this week, Arthur Fonzarelli took one giant leap for television, one small step for mankind.

In a classic episode of Happy Days, we anxiously watched the Fonz waterskiing, wearing his trademark black leather jacket, behind a speed boat driven by the freckled teen, Richie Cunningham, played by Ron Howard.

The Fonz, aka Henry Winkler, successfully skied up a ramp and cleared a pen holding a monstrous shark.

The episode, first aired on September 20, 1977, gave birth to the phrase “Jump the Shark” – that moment when a fading TV show resorts to stunts or “special guests” to prop up its ratings and extend its life.

But the phrase has since entered the vernacular to describe desperate attempts by individuals, organisations or political parties to boost their popularity.

It’s hard to pinpoint the Jump the Shark moment of the Marshall Government. There were so many of them. My favourite was the government’s Old Mate advertising campaign, featuring an elderly gent blubbering as he visits our tourism hot spots.

While it’s still a bit early for a Jump the Shark episode from Premier Peter Malinauskas, he had a practice run this week with the news he’s bidding for the rights to stage an AFL “magic round” in Adelaide next April.

The AFL is whipping state premiers into a bidding frenzy by musing about adding an extra home-and-away round next April, with all games played in the one state. Milking cash from taxpayers by teasing gullible state and federal governments is a game the AFL plays very well. No outfit does it better.

The Premier is excited, telling The Advertiser the state can “put on a pretty amazing experience” showcasing the Adelaide Oval. Hold that thought for a few seconds.

“Money will be involved, I mean, unfortunately, these days, nothing comes for free and the AFL are pretty commercial in their operations,” he told ABC breakfast radio.

“I think that it’s clear to us that other states around the country are putting their hand up as well so it’s going to be competitive – we’re not going to pay more than it’s worth but we are going to make a serious bid.”

How much money? He’s not telling but he’ll dip into a $40 million “major events” fund created for luring just such a gig. On past form, the AFL will want the lot.

Here’s a crazy thought. Instead of throwing more money at the rich, monolithic AFL and its clubs groaning with handsomely-paid players and administrators, why not ask them to first give us back some of the money we’ve lavished on them?

How about the AFL, its pockets bulging with a new TV rights deal, starts paying a dividend to SA taxpayers for the use of the magnificent stadium we built for them?

At a time when ordinary South Australians are struggling with rising costs of mortgages, rent, petrol and groceries, a strong moral case exists for the AFL to get its hands out of taxpayers’ pockets.

The Premier believes the “magic round” would showcase our revamped Adelaide Oval.

Here’s the shorthand version of the Adelaide Oval “deal”. First, SA’s taxpayers paid out an $85 million debt racked up by the SACA for its leaky new grandstand. Taxpayers then stumped up the full cost of building the new stadium and all the associated geegaws, like the footbridge.

Touted as a $450 million “fixed cost redevelopment”, this quickly blew out to $535 million. InDaily reported in 2014 that the full bill had topped $610 million, according to the Auditor-General’s report tabled that year.

The AFL kicked in $5 million and $30 million in Commonwealth funding was deemed to be “outside of the $535 million statutory limit” defined in the legislation for the stadium – the Adelaide Oval Redevelopment and Management Act 2011.

A normal commercial deal would see those people who stump up the bulk of the cash either being repaid in a long-term lease arrangement or getting a share of the stadium profits, or both. Nope, that’s not how sports stadium deals work.

Instead, the Stadium Management Authority distributes most of its profits to SACA and SANFL, the SA National Football League.

It pays $2 million into a “sinking fund” for maintenance and a piddly $1 million annually to the state government, effectively a peppercorn rent, supposedly earmarked for community sport. Most elite footy players won’t get out of bed for under $1 million a year.

Technically, the big winners are SACA, SANFL and our two AFL clubs, the Adelaide Crows and the Power.

But both the AFL, and Cricket Australia, who bankroll them, can well afford to kick some real cash into the can to pay for the stadium. The AFL has only just clinched a $4.5 billion, seven-year broadcast rights deal. It’s seriously loaded.

They could be forced to do so by a simple amendment to the 2011 Adelaide Oval legislation. If both major parties agreed, as they did when gutting ICAC, it’d be a five-minute job. It will never happen.

At a time when ordinary South Australians are struggling with rising costs of mortgages, rent, petrol and groceries, a strong moral case exists for the AFL to get its hands out of taxpayers’ pockets.

The Port Adelaide Football Club cadged millions from taxpayers before the last election to revamp its Alberton Oval base – $3 million from the Marshall Government and $15 million from the Morrison Government.

The club boasted of its strong financial position last year, declaring a record operating profit of $4,209,451 and says it is on track to clear its hefty $13 million debt in five years.

So why does it need cash from taxpayers to blow on an unnecessary and unpopular $30 million expansion?

Despite the pandemic, the Crows recorded a statutory profit of $1.24 million for the 2021 financial year, but has already begun nagging for government handouts to help build the club’s new headquarters on the Thebarton Oval site at Torrensville.

Now the Tasmanian Government is being told it must commit to building a $750 million covered-roof stadium at Macquarie Point if it’s to have any hope of gaining a precious AFL licence to field a Tassie team in the national league.

The government has already pledged $375 million, and you can bet the AFL will be looking to the feds to kick in the rest. What a lark.

Premier Malinauskas was elected promising to chase ambulances – the hospital ramping crisis is getting worse instead of better – not chase rainbows.

Henry Winkler, who did his own water-skiing in the infamous scene, had no regrets.

“At that time, I had great legs,” he reportedly said. “So, I didn’t care for one minute. We were No. 1 for five years after that, what did I care that there was a phrase? F— ’em.”

Politicians are happy to jump the odd shark too, if they can see votes in it.

Matthew Abraham’s political column is published on Fridays.

Matthew can be found on Twitter as @kevcorduroy. It’s a long story.