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

[LFC]

Peter Fitz always writes condescending and snide articles about football.A typical North Shore Rugby wanker.

can't stand that opiniated entitled rugga boy - same applies of his wife go figure haha....

Decentric, I think living down there you don't see much mainland press barring the nationalistic ones, those 2 codes do keep fearing our game, as JOH used to say don't you worry about that ! haha

 

[Decentric]

can't stand that opiniated entitled rugga boy - same applies of his wife go figure haha....

Decentric, I think living down there you don't see much mainland press barring the nationalistic ones, those 2 codes do keep fearing our game, as JOH used to say don't you worry about that ! haha

I need to be a bit careful. A few posters writing to each other claimed I hated AFL.

Awful to be considered to ‘hate’ a sport. What I don’t like is the upper echelons of AFL admin dominating so much of my state. Grass roots Aussie Rules is different. When I’ve been door knocking even Aussie Rules players of both genders despise the AFL admin for bleeding grass roots Aussie Rules dry.

I must admit I like reading NSW posters stating how it is minor in NSW.

My opinion, and I might be wrong, hopefully wrong, is that the egg ball codes aren’t worried about football anymore given it seems our mainstream media coverage has gone backwards in Aus, whilst AFL and basketball are getting a lot of coverage.

I was astonished to read Mr C’s post a few back! The fear of Aus winning the WC!

 

[Decentric]

Peter Fitz always writes condescending and snide articles about football.A typical North Shore Rugby wanker.

Because I don’t pay for Murdoch or Fairfax media, I never read his columns anymore.

 

[Decentric]

They are clever epl and Matilda's is now socially acceptable but a league and socceroos is taboo

I have mates I used to play football with at underage level who follow the Matildas, but not AL and Socceroos.

 

[Decentric]

I've told this story many times but one more time won't hurt...

Back in 2011 when Oz was bidding for the 2022 World Cup (I know, I know...) my publisher was invited to a secret meeting.

He was one of 100 people who were regarded as AFL thought leaders - in his case, because he'd published a couple of AFL books as well as my Mr Cleansheets.

He wasn't an AFL man though. He'd been born in Sunderland and was football through and through. But he accepted the invitation to the Crown Casino where Eddie Maguire 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.) And the FIFA technical committee gave Oz a black mark on other code and stadia compliance given how the AFL played hard ball. They would have actually received the best benefit from stadia development if we had won the bid.

So yes, they fear us - probably because the world continues to shrink and football gets bigger and bigger while their boring game continues to thrive in one country only.

I hadn’t heard of it.

Love reading it!

 

[Decentric]

They don't fear football as much as they fear having their cash cows taken away - gambling and government. Wilkie is working very hard on the gambling and the government will follow.

Wilkie has been a big advocate of football in Southern Tas.

 

[BA81]

Wilkie has been a big advocate of football in Southern Tas.

As long as he’s put that unsavoury incident from his youth* well&truly behind him, then more power to him..

*(In the late-2000s it emerged that when he’d been in the Army Reserve back in the early ‘80s, he caused a stir in his unit by urging a minute’s silence to be held ‘in honour’ of what would’ve been Hitler’s 95th birthday..)

 

[patjennings]

He's Greg Beaufort.

The thing with Peter FitzSimons is that he is a very good writer of historical books.

If he put his thoughts, efforts and research he has to other books he is the kind of writer that could truly show Australians that the organised game has been here since the early 1880s. That a game was used to distract the Turks while troops were evacuated from Gallipoli, that the NSW Protestant Churches Soccer Association (where Johnny Warren and Timmy Cahill started was the largest football association in the southern hemisphere, explain the rise of the football social clubs that were spawned by post war immigration, the enormous achievement of a group of part-timers making the last 16 in the world to go to the 1974 World Cup, the formation of the NSL, the bastardry of Channel 7, the anguish of the Socceroos in the wilderness and the joy and unity that a successful Nations team/s bring.

At the same time he can explain the lengths the AFL has gone to smash football and the extent to which football administrators have done so all while exposing the abundance of taxpayer money going to the AFL and the paucity to football.

Add in a chapter showing early pictures of our indigenous people playing the equivalent of keepie-uppie.

 

[LFC]

totally against his grain pjennings no matter the talent I never see in him.

 

[patjennings]

totally against his grain pjennings no matter the talent I never see in him.

Well we have the story, we have the stats man, we just need the right author.

 

[Mr Cleansheets]

Well we have the story, we have the stats man, we just need the right author.

Ian Syson has written quite a lot along those lines.

He was also the publisher of Mr C so has extremely good judgment.

 

[patjennings]

Ian Syson has written quite a lot along those lines.

He was also the publisher of Mr C so has extremely good judgment.

But therein is the problem. We need an author that will command a larger audience. Sorry Ian and Adrian. If Fitzsimons had a Saul on the road to Tarsus experience (biblical reference) he would be ideal. Fozz is too divisive. Does Simon Hill write books or just articles?

Possible others Don Watson or from a sports background Grantlee Kieza who has done some non-sport biographies as well.

 

[Mr Cleansheets]

But therein is the problem. We need an author that will command a larger audience. Sorry Ian and Adrian. If Fitzsimons had a Saul on the road to Tarsus experience (biblical reference) he would be ideal. Fozz is too divisive. Does Simon Hill write books or just articles?

Possible others Don Watson or from a sports background Grantlee Kieza who has done some non-sport biographies as well.

I wasn't putting my hand up. Just noting Ian has already written extensively on the topic.

Asking Fitzsimons to write (positively) about football is like asking Fred Nile to write about porn.

 

[patjennings]

I wasn't putting my hand up. Just noting Ian has already written extensively on the topic.

Asking Fitzsimons to write (positively) about football is like asking Fred Nile to write about porn.

Apparently Fred had his staff reviewing porn (just so he knew what he didn't like)

"I have not viewed this material, neither have I had my staff sitting there perving over a pornographic film - but investigating this very important social issue area."

 

[BA81]

But therein is the problem. We need an author that will command a larger audience. Sorry Ian and Adrian. If Fitzsimons had a Saul on the road to Tarsus experience (biblical reference) he would be ideal.

Not necessarily, a lot of people don’t take his literal work seriously because of his public persona ie. ‘Pirate Pete’

He liked my design-proposal for a new/republican Australian flag on Twitter years ago, and that’s literally all that’s positive I have to say about him.

 

[Kitwally]

Aside from his rugby/NRL anti-football bias, I don’t think he is a good writer at all

 

[Decentric]

As long as he’s put that unsavoury incident from his youth* well&truly behind him, then more power to him..

*(In the late-2000s it emerged that when he’d been in the Army Reserve back in the early ‘80s, he caused a stir in his unit by urging a minute’s silence to be held ‘in honour’ of what would’ve been Hitler’s 95th birthday..)

Wow!

Have never heard this story!

 

[BA81]

The thing with Peter FitzSimons is that he is a very good writer of historical books.

If he put his thoughts, efforts and research he has to other books he is the kind of writer that could truly show Australians that the organised game has been here since the early 1880s. That a game was used to distract the Turks while troops were evacuated from Gallipoli, that the NSW Protestant Churches Soccer Association (where Johnny Warren and Timmy Cahill started was the largest football association in the southern hemisphere, explain the rise of the football social clubs that were spawned by post war immigration, the enormous achievement of a group of part-timers making the last 16 in the world to go to the 1974 World Cup, the formation of the NSL, the bastardry of Channel 7, the anguish of the Socceroos in the wilderness and the joy and unity that a successful Nations team/s bring.

At the same time he can explain the lengths the AFL has gone to smash football and the extent to which football administrators have done so all while exposing the abundance of taxpayer money going to the AFL and the paucity to football.

Add in a chapter showing early pictures of our indigenous people playing the equivalent of keepie-uppie.

Call me a pessimist, but the majority of mainstream-Australia wouldn’t touch it w/a bargepole…and those that did would be incredulous@ stuff like ️‘s role in the ANZAC war-effort - they’d most likely dismiss it as revisionist fiction akin to claiming that African-Americans fought in the Confederate Army in the American Civil War..

 

[BA81]

Wow!

Have never heard this story!

Turns out I misremembered certain specifics(& forgot about him being accused of SA), but it happened: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-04-15/wilkie-cant-remember-alleged-hitler-salute/2614256

How it didn’t result in his political death is one of life’s little mysteries.

 

[patjennings]

Call me a pessimist, but the majority of mainstream-Australia wouldn’t touch it w/a bargepole…and those that did would be incredulous@ stuff like ️‘s role in the ANZAC war-effort - they’d most likely dismiss it as revisionist fiction akin to claiming that African-Americans fought in the Confederate Army in the American Civil War..

Maybe it needs to be more accessible. A Ben Coonan / Richard Bayliss documentary series with an accompanying book - but how it is broadcast/streamed needs to be as wide as possible.