agreed.

That it appears that Aust Football was about to take off with Victor Trumper and others doing the ground work……only for them to jump ship because of the potential of pounds to be gained by touring England……well, in a sense, fair enough….it’s all business.

alas – it might’ve been worth more to them to be able to run a full scale inter-state football code rivalry rather than the odd treck to the other side of the world.

Victorians of all classes were into sports, and were good at it generally. And you just mentioned that. Also one cannot discount the influence of those who generally believed (in those days ) that the English way was best of all and thus the Rugbies started to blossom as England started reaching its zenith (possibly of all time) in Rugby Football

I wasnt evaluating the draft choices, I’ve long suggested that Western Australian recruits have punched above their weight.

South Australians though are proof Tasmanians can swim. Having put up with 50,000 rabid Crows fans at AAMI last September I can testify they they collectively are indeed candidates for Street Talk.

Redb

The Vic recruiters seem often too focussed on the TAC Cup itself, but, are finally now starting to look outside the circle a fraction. (esp re int & NSW rookies etc).

You watched two games with the Bombers both of which were one sided big losses! Wow your really up to speed.

eg: If your saw the St Kilda game which Essendon won, you would have seen Ryder and Watson magic.

Maybe you should watch more than a couple of AFL games before you comment.

And please a South Australian calling a Melbournian anything but Sir is a joke I’ve been to your pisssssant town many times, it is a backwater, deal with it.

Redb

Ultimately I’d like to see a 4 state comp with Vic, SA, WA & QLD. QLD are almost strong enough to field a decent origin side in AFL footy. They would already be strong enough to beat tradtional footy state Tasmania.

Redb

The other thing we found about 10 years ago when we tried to have a few games is that gun players would use the weekend dedicated to a rep game to get over some niggly injuries (which every player carries), i.e. pulling out of the game last minute.

In the end, a weekend of rest ended up being more important than a weekend of rep games – that’s the way it is.

In the modern form of the game, to play two games with a 3 or 4 day break is impossible. Some blokes are running a half marathon inside two hours, they need five days to recover.

Also, to have a three way contest is to leave about 15% of all AFL players out in the cold.

In all honesty, it has very little to recommend it.

In a future where we have 20 teams with an 18 or 19 round comp – there may well be an opportunity to do something like that – but I doubt it.

Its the same when players get injured playing friendlies for their country in soccer. Arsene Wenger is fuming that robin van persie will be out for 6 months after being injured for holland v italy in a game no one could care less about.

Granted the wages arent as high in the AFL but i doubt any club/coach would be happy to lose a key player playing a game no one really cares for anymore.

Vic might have won a match against the “Dream Team” but the Vic’s were playing for “The Big V”, The dream team were playing for who exactly? How many of them gave a rats about the game? It would have been a different story if the players had of pulled on their state jumpers, that’s the same reason that the “All-Stars” were always rubbish.

You just don’t get it really, you’ve got all these clubs in Victoria and all these draft picks come from Victoria yet the SA and WA standards are every bit as high.

Sure SA and WA mightn’t be in their glory days right now (but neither are the Vics) but the Vic’s are too dumb to recognise that the game exists outside their state.

That’s why Collingwood picked Fraser with the #1 pick in 99, Richmond went in for Fiora at #3 and let Pavlich – who was miles ahead of them all – slip to #4. They obviously hadn’t seen enough SA footy, anyone who had knew how good Pavlich was but not the Vic’s, no, Fraser was seen as the best of the bunch because he was a Vic.

Perfect example of the attitude of the Vic clubs. You hold no regard for SA or WA and yet in SOO the battles were generally pretty even, even without the SANFL or the WAFL having the money that the VFL had.

I admit, I didn’t watch a great deal of AFL this last year, most I managed was a game a week, mostly getting up early on a Saturday morning but I did manage to catch 2 Bombers games this year, two weeks in a row in fact against Geelong and the mighty Crows.

And your claims that he is “one of the best inside midfielders going around” and that “he will come into Brownlow contention in 2010.” are simply ridiculous and have totally discredited you.

He might have improved but he was totally lost against the Cats, got a bit of the ball against the Crows but did nothing with it but I guess that is an improvement on a few years ago when he was complete and utter rubbish, I remember laughing as he was meant to be the next big thing and he was way out of his depth.

As for being in Brownlow contention in 2010. Again, thankyou for the laughs. He didn’t even poll a vote in 2009 but he’ll be in contention in 2010…Sure Redb, sure…

Stop dreaming, you’re a big-headed Vic with Bomber goggles on, he’s the son of a former great, doesn’t make him a great player.

it’s died out a couple of times,

Aust Footy SoO has struggled to sustain interest (although a couple of ‘glory’ years around 1984-1986),

and it’s only really QLD and NSW who just love to beat up on each other, over, and over,……and over again, and again, and again…….

Pippinu: I expect you’re right that the fact the major AFL states are split in 3 would be one of he big reasons that the AFL SOO didn’t really garner the same passion. The major RL states are split in 2 (1 big brother, 1 little brother) and it’s just a better fit.
I disagree though that the 15% of players in AFL who didn’t fit easily in the 3 states should be a major factor, with the NRL having many international players plenty of high profile players like Benji Marshall aren’t eligible to play Origin but this doesn’t seem to affect the series

you can’t dig yourself out with that one, ……….nice try though.

btw – remember,

back then, they’s was ‘intercolonial’ matches.

Well that’s a new theory – care to expand?

edit – just seen Pip’s mention of 1879 SA and Victoria. Either way, not soccer! Ha!