"Can you smell the fear?", do the other football codes in Australia (AFL,NRL), genuinely fear football?

[Quicky]

No doubt they include pets and 3 game memberships to inflate numbers. In my day you were a season ticket holder or nothing.
And there's an argument there too, they aren't actually members are they? No votes?

Beat me to it. They do count those.

 

[Quicky]

The AFL has the most to lose with the changing fabric of society. Pacific islanders like their NRL. SE Asians like football or cricket. South Americans football. Europeans football.

You've got to be really born and brought up around AFL to be a regular. I know there are anecdotes of migrants going to games but they're minimal.

It's the same with the NRL. Very few Chinese and Koreans go. You've got suburbs that bear the clubs name so full of these nationalities now but they're all at home. The fans have all moved to other areas and travel in for games. Local identity is dying for the eggball codes. Rugby Union is already gone.

The AFL isn't scared of Football. It's too well run, supported and ruthless.

I think Football has a victim mentality that holds it back.

That isn't to say there aren't things to feel hard done by over. Media treatment etc.

But we need to get our own house in order. There's too much bickering and self interest. We hold ourselves back.

 

[libelous]

AFL doesn't have social clubs like in the NRL. But they do have investments and they're often pubs or hotels. It used to be common for those to include pokies, but most of the pokies licences were sold a while ago. Only the small clubs who are financially weaker kept them. Most don't need them.

The AFL is financially tightly controlled. There are two salary caps. One for the teams playing list. Another on the football department.

Clubs get revenue from memberships, tickets, sponsorships, TV rights and whatever investments they have.

There's an equalisation fund that the financially stronger clubs have to pay into, that is redistributed to the smaller clubs, including the northern states expansion teams GC and GWS.

The big clubs, once they've paid the salary caps and other expenses have profits. Those profits usually go into their facilities, are reinvested or used for philanthropic efforts.

Much easier to control as it’s such a small sport.

 

[Quicky]

Much easier to control as it’s such a small sport.

Not in Australia it isn't. As sports we're comparable in this Country.

 

[Muz]

Nope

 

[onedaywinners...]

Err... NZ is Rugby Union as is the UK. League started in the UK and has a solid small base compared to RU.

Not my point. I understand Union is the real Rugby, I'm just speaking to the fact that League still has a following outside of Australia (with a World Cup - 16 nations in 2021) compared to AFL that is lucky to have a random comp in a random country.

 

[BA81]

We'll know we've really got under the AFL's skin for good when they start calling the premiership the 'World Championship'

When Collingwood won their drought-breaking premiership in 1990(against my former team, don’t remind me), they released a commemorative t-shirt that read ‘1990 WORLD CHAMPIONS’

I get it was probably more in jest than how straight-faced North American pro-sports franchises are about that sort of thing by comparison, but still..

 

[libelous]

Not in Australia it isn't. As sports we're comparable in this Country.

Are you saying Australian Rules Football is as big a sport as football ( soccer), if so on what basis.

 

[BA81]

But he accepted the invitation to the Crown Casino where Eddie McGuire and Andrew Demetriou led the meeting. Their message was that if football won the World Cup, their game was dead.

Obviously, that is ridiculous but that's the length they went to (Eddie exhorted them all to do all they possibly could to ensure Oz did not get the World Cup).

Ah, Eddie - the son of a Celtic-supporting -migrant father.

His joint-statement w/Demetriou’s all the more ironic given that after we got knocked out by in the ‘02 WC qualifiers, he took to the column that he had in the Herald-Sun@ the time to lambast Soccer Australia’s maladministration of the game as the root-cause of our WC-qualifying drought, and even said “I don’t subscribe to the theory that ️ WC-qualification failure strengthens the AFL’s position - they’re both great games in their own right that have&continue to enrich our sports-mad country”

Interestingly, he ended it by theorising that failure to reach the WC finals could yet prove a blessing in disguise for the prospects of ️ reform, as the position of the corrupt Soccer Australia admin would’ve only been solidified had we qualified..

So it begs the question: did his views on this topic genuinely change over time..or was it all just part of his Eddie-being-Eddie grift

 

[Quicky]

Are you saying Australian Rules Football is as big a sport as football ( soccer), if so on what basis.

In Australia it is. Not globally obviously.

 

[Mr Cleansheets]

Ah, Eddie - the son of a Celtic-supporting -migrant father.

His joint-statement w/Demetriou’s all the more ironic given that after we got knocked out by in the ‘02 WC qualifiers, he took to the column that he had in the Herald-Sun@ the time to lambast Soccer Australia’s maladministration of the game as the root-cause of our WC-qualifying drought, and even said “I don’t subscribe to the theory that ️ WC-qualification failure strengthens the AFL’s position - they’re both great games in their own right that have&continue to enrich our sports-mad country”

Interestingly, he ended it by theorising that failure to reach the WC finals could yet prove a blessing in disguise for the prospects of ️ reform, as the position of the corrupt Soccer Australia admin would’ve only been solidified had we qualified..

So it begs the question: did his views on this topic genuinely change over time..or was it all just part of his Eddie-being-Eddie grift

Without having read his article, I suspect it was his way of sticking the boot in with faint praise.

 

[libelous]

In Australia it is. Not globally obviously.

But on what criteria?

 

[Barca4life]

The AFL isn't scared of Football. It's too well run, supported and ruthless.

I think Football has a victim mentality that holds it back.

That isn't to say there aren't things to feel hard done by over. Media treatment etc.

But we need to get our own house in order. There's too much bickering and self interest. We hold ourselves back.

Two things can be true at once, football needs to continue to get better at running the sport but also the way the AFL media goes after football doesn’t their cause of being insecure either.

Look up that Ian Syson book which talks about how they attack football from the earlier times, it’s a sport they clearly fear the most.

 

[grazorblade]

Two things can be true at once, football needs to continue to get better at running the sport but also the way the AFL media goes after football doesn’t their cause of being insecure either.

Look up that Ian Syson book which talks about how they attack football from the earlier times, it’s a sport they clearly fear the most.

could be fear or could be dominance behaviour

sometimes people just like punching a little guy in the nose for no reason

 

[BA81]

Without having read his article, I suspect it was his way of sticking the boot in with faint praise.

Either way, he could afford to be as ‘sympathetic’ as he was for the simple reason that he(let alone any genuine ️ fan) didn’t believe there would be any actual reform for the game in this country - or even just the NSL - in our lifetimes, if ever.

Let’s face it, when the image of Tony Vidmar crying w/physio Les Gelis consoling him came up on the match-broadcast, the Crawford Report/A-League etc. may as well have been 100 years away…no-one would’ve dared predict it was only 45 months

 

[Mr Cleansheets]

Ian S

Two things can be true at once, football needs to continue to get better at running the sport but also the way the AFL media goes after football doesn’t their cause of being insecure either.

Look up that Ian Syson book which talks about how they attack football from the earlier times, it’s a sport they clearly fear the most.

Ian Syson was the publisher of Mr Cleansheets.

It was his story I was quoting.

 

[Quicky]

Two things can be true at once, football needs to continue to get better at running the sport but also the way the AFL media goes after football doesn’t their cause of being insecure either.

Look up that Ian Syson book which talks about how they attack football from the earlier times, it’s a sport they clearly fear the most.

Yeah take your point. Is it fear or ruthlessness though? Both perhaps.

 

[onedaywinners...]

What solely national sport wouldn't be fearful of the potential popular explosion of the biggest sport in the world?!?!

Definitely corporate pricks that get off on abusing their power and keeping the little guy down...but all that behaviour comes from a place of deep insecurity.

 

[libelous]

Yeah take your point. Is it fear or ruthlessness though? Both perhaps.

I would suggest they are covering up their fear by appearing to be resolute in their demands for top domination of all sport. So far their acolytes in the media have delivered, however there will come a time when this will no longer be the case. That time is coming quicker than many expect.

 

[BA81]

I would suggest they are covering up their fear by appearing to be resolute in their demands for top domination of all sport. So far their acolytes in the media have delivered, however there will come a time when this will no longer be the case. That time is coming quicker than many expect.

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly hope so..but it would be foolhardy of us as a code to steadfastly pin our hopes on ‘generational-change’ or however it’s to be described.

I’m of the belief(as I’ve stated enough times on this forum already) that there is one true way forward for ️ in , and it so happens to be the polar-opposite of what the governing body’s been spruiking for the past 20 years. But until they swallow their pride and accept this, we’ll remain right where we currently are..if not noticeably regress