In Melbourne, AFL is the only game in town

 
Pippinu Roar Guru

By Pippinu, 7 Aug 2008 Pippinu is a Roar Guru

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I have blogged for a few years now and I see myself as a bit of an oddity in terms of the enthusiasm I have for both football and Aussie Rules, something I don’t come across too often in the blogosphere.

One exception I am familiar with is the Melbourne Victory forum where, while you might find the odd World Game aficionado who has a complete dislike of the indigenous game, generally speaking, they enjoy talking about their favourite AFL teams.

And there are even whole threads dedicated to each Victorian club.

Indeed, this phenomenon is only too well known to the Melbourne Victory administration, who are more than keen to cultivate links with followers of all AFL clubs in Melbourne, and this is one element of Melbourne Victory’s success in attracting a very large membership so early in the life of the league.

I have written this article because I am sometimes bewildered by some of the views that emanate from bloggers who live in Sydney, and the sorts of conclusions they reach in terms of where the various codes are going.

As a keen supporter of both football and Aussie Rules, a recent catch-cry amongst football enthusiasts designed to denigrate the other codes, which has also confounded me in equal measure is, “Smell the fear.”

I have mentioned in other forums that it clearly is a sentiment that could only ever make any sense in Sydney (if at all), and that residents of Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Launceston, Geelong, Darwin, and even Albury-Wondonga and Wagga Wagga, would be left scratching their heads as to why that sentiment was being conveyed.

As a small example, let us look at this morning’s The Age, a fine publication with a long history of quality journalism.

On the eve of the Olympic games, we quite rightly see references to the games in its masthead.

But what do you think pretty much occupies the first two pages of the paper? And I’m not talking about the sports lift-out. I’m talking about the news section proper.

It’s pretty much all Aussie Rules, most significantly the shocking news that Collingwood player, Alan Didak, lied to his club president.

Didak almost got away with it, except for the small problem that there were some 20,000 witnesses to him sipping a few sherbets. If you’re a Collingwood player and you want to go on a pub crawl through Melbourne, you better wear a pretty good disguise.

All this is to simply underline that in Melbourne (and the other southern capitals), there is really only one game in town. And for anyone to suggest otherwise is to live in a fantasy world.

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