The war that’s not a war
Roar Rookie By Chris A, 16 May 2012 Chris A is a Roar Rookie
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- AFL, Code wars, football, NRL, Rugby League, Rugby Union
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There is no such thing as a football code war.
On all sides of the media we hear pundits – who are apparently different to normal people – spouting lines about the “Barassi line” and poaching players.
Israel Folau and Karmichael Hunt have become household names and part of marketing campaigns for the AFL juggernaut’s entrance to new regions.
I see groups of media playing out the implied western front of sport that actually is western Sydney, adding a range of sound bites from angry coaches or managers.
Yet I don’t see a war and I’ll give you a quick insight about it.
Almost every sports fan I speak with has more than one code that they enjoy and follow.
I play football (the soccer variety) and at every training the conversation starts with how a teammate’s AFL club went on the weekend.
If I log onto twitter on a Sunday afternoon my feed from other A-League fans will be filled with comments on the day’s AFL or NRL games.
My friendship group’s last A-League grand final barbeque was to be held by a devout Geelong Cats fan, right up until his cable TV was removed only days before.
What this indicates is that the fans of sport love a good game, especially the ones they understand well.
This kind of fan is not a rarity, especially among those I know and have met. And for those who don’t enjoy a league or union match, I’ve never really felt threatened by the appearance of the Storm and Rebels.
An actual fan enjoys sport for the merits of it, without yelling obscenities at other fans.
In fact most comments that are quoted by media from online forums border on verbal assault; anyone yelling that would be banned from most Australian venues.
These games are not being voted off the island like some form of bad reality TV show or into office like a democracy, but the most people have to do is choose if there is a time clash between two code’s games.
And no fan wants to decide which team they’d rather watch if they could go to both.
I know the media likes a controversy more than anyone else, but why do we put up the with the promotion of a dislike or hate between the groups, especially when it doesn’t actually exist?
The Crowd Says (128) | Page 2 of Comments
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- AFL, Code wars, football, NRL, Rugby League, Rugby Union
May 16th 2012 @ 12:00pm
The Cattery said | May 16th 2012 @ 12:00pm | Report comment
I’d like to add that I think Lacrosse has had it tough in this country for far too long.
May 16th 2012 @ 12:06pm
Fussball ist unser leben said | May 16th 2012 @ 12:06pm | Report comment
TC
I would love to read some of the mainstream media attacks on Lacrosse to understand the level of persecution this sport has endured in Australia. Do you have (m)any links to articles in the mainstream media that we can read?
May 16th 2012 @ 12:20pm
The Cattery said | May 16th 2012 @ 12:20pm | Report comment
Much worse than getting attacked – it is completely ignored!
As Yabby Jeans used to say: don’t worry if they’re talking about you – start worrying if they’re not talking about you.
May 16th 2012 @ 1:03pm
Australian Rules said | May 16th 2012 @ 1:03pm | Report comment
Sorry mate, I know you push this barrow a lot, but Lacrosse is never going to receive proper attention in this country…nor will netball take off in America.
May 16th 2012 @ 2:28pm
The Cattery said | May 16th 2012 @ 2:28pm | Report comment
Well, that saddens me, it’s a great game worthy of a bit more support.
May 16th 2012 @ 3:04pm
Australian Rules said | May 16th 2012 @ 3:04pm | Report comment
Aren’t they all…
May 16th 2012 @ 1:47pm
NF said | May 16th 2012 @ 1:47pm | Report comment
Code war is a media creation but fans of every code seems to eat it up hook, line and sinker 85% of time (guess approximation) because they feel they have the right to defend and stick up for the code whenever they have a chance while kicking the other code down.
May 16th 2012 @ 9:25pm
mds1970 said | May 16th 2012 @ 9:25pm | Report comment
The bottom line is, code wars sell newspapers and get hits and comments in cyberspace.
I could submit an article “The effect of playing multiple tall forwards against a flooded backlne” and receive maybe 100 hit and half a dozen comments if I’m lucky. Or I could submit an article “2022 World Cup bid – 500 days on” and I’d be guaranteed 200 comments and thousands of hits.
It’s a tried, true and trusted formula.
May 16th 2012 @ 9:31pm
The Cattery said | May 16th 2012 @ 9:31pm | Report comment
Hmmm…that’s not a bad title for a new article…about the tall forwards I mean.
May 16th 2012 @ 2:20pm
Rough Conduct said | May 16th 2012 @ 2:20pm | Report comment
Anyone who thinks Andrew Demetriou is not trying to take ground from other sports to benefit his own is completely delusional. It’s called increasing market share, the absolute primary objective of the AFL commission.
May 16th 2012 @ 2:34pm
SportsFanMelb said | May 16th 2012 @ 2:34pm | Report comment
Rough Conduct – That is the same objective for NRL, ARU, FFA, Basketball and every other sport in AUS.
Are you saying that the AFL should not be doing this? Or do you have an issue that they are doing it, and have the resources to back it up?
May 16th 2012 @ 2:59pm
Futbanous said | May 16th 2012 @ 2:59pm | Report comment
Sort of contradicting the premise of this article then if all sporting bodies are in fierce competition for the public dollar.
Lets all have a multi sports ” Love In” but don’t tell any of the CEO’s who run sports in Australia they might try & persuade you that their sport is better than the rest.
May 16th 2012 @ 5:49pm
The Cattery said | May 16th 2012 @ 5:49pm | Report comment
We are all equal – but some are more equal than others.
May 16th 2012 @ 9:15pm
Chris A said | May 16th 2012 @ 9:15pm | Report comment
I have some doubts that the administration speaks for the fans regardless. In this situation of sport though it’s not imperative that you choose one sport over the other. I doubt you’ll ever be forced to only watch AFL or NRL so market share cannot really be stolen from another code.
May 16th 2012 @ 7:12pm
mds1970 said | May 16th 2012 @ 7:12pm | Report comment
It’s a curious phenomenon – we have one favourite sport, but follow many others. But will defend our one favourite, even at the expense of other sports we also enjoy.
The bottom line – code wars are fun.
May 16th 2012 @ 7:25pm
The Cattery said | May 16th 2012 @ 7:25pm | Report comment
mds
very true – you and I are relatively similar in this vein – we follow Australian Football, soccer and perhaps other sports, but we definitley are unashamedly Australian Football fans first and foremost.
May 16th 2012 @ 7:31pm
jamesb said | May 16th 2012 @ 7:31pm | Report comment
good article Chris A
i find code war articles a bit of a bore. When I was young I played mulitple sports like Cricket, basketball, Volleyball, League, Tennis, Golf, Soccer and many others which i’m struggling to remember at this point of time, whether it was at school, or outside of school.
The point is I didn’t play one sport and thats it. I’m sure many people on this forum played at many sports when we were young.
Actually we’re all still young LOL
May 16th 2012 @ 9:18pm
Chris A said | May 16th 2012 @ 9:18pm | Report comment
I started playing golf two years ago and realised I was rubbish but still enjoyed it. Have tried Union, AFL and still play soccer. I agree entirely that the articles are quite boring, but no-one seems to be arguing against the code wars actually existing.
May 16th 2012 @ 9:49pm
Daniel said | May 16th 2012 @ 9:49pm | Report comment
As I dont live in Sydney, I am not exposed to the writings of the Sydney newspaper media. It is clear to me in Perth though that there is a degree of animosity between the codes. As a fan it is possible (and common) to support multiple codes, but elite quality atheletes are harder to come by. For every top level player of one code, there is one less available to the other codes. If football grows and attracts the best atheletes in Australia, the quality of AFL/NRL will eventually decline. When the quality drops, people stop watching.
The media side of the football war is spurred by simple self interest. You dont get much cricket on the news of channel 7 or 10, and football is only really focused on by non-commercial stations. Unfortunatley for football, the game doesnt lend itself to ad breaks every 5-10 minutes like AFL or cricket. THis makes it a whole lot less attractive to the commercial stations.
May 16th 2012 @ 10:07pm
The Cattery said | May 16th 2012 @ 10:07pm | Report comment
Daniel
In relation to your point on the media side, in truth, in all the top soccer nations on Earth, the game is on Pay TV and the Pay TV operators pay handsomely for the rights – so at the end of the day, whether you run ads is not as important as how much a Pay TV operator is willing to pay for the product.
Even if you thought Fox was not paying its market value, Fussball has assured us on this site that more people watch the game online than on TV, which means that an online provider would pay more than Fox if Fox was paying unders and if the online provider was going to make the money back on subscriptions.
For argument’s sake, if Fox was going to bid, say, $150 million for five years (i.e. $30 million per annum), the online operator might bid $175 million for five years, or $35 million per annum. The online operator would then need to sell around 140,000 subscriptions at $250 a pop to break even, which aren’t outlandishly high numbers.
On the question of attracting athletes, I am advised on this site on an almost daily basis that soccer is not a game for athletes but a game for skilled artistes, so it’s extremely unlikely that the development of soccer in this country would have any serious effect on Australian Football. I can’t speak for the rugby codes.
May 16th 2012 @ 10:10pm
Fussball ist unser leben said | May 16th 2012 @ 10:10pm | Report comment
“THis makes it a whole lot less attractive to the commercial stations.”
Yet, around the world, football is the most watched sport on TV. Funny that.
May 17th 2012 @ 12:03am
ItsCalled AussieRules said | May 17th 2012 @ 12:03am | Report comment
There’s no winning the code war,
but I can tell you who is winning the most hated sporting code in Sydney award at the moment.
May 17th 2012 @ 12:17am
peeeko said | May 17th 2012 @ 12:17am | Report comment
i mreally over the whole code war stuff but comments like “your local regional games like NRL and AFL are igsignificant” really get people peeved. just like soccer fans get really peeved when “journos” write articles that soccer supporters are all thugs and players are all “divers” its all tit for tat
May 17th 2012 @ 7:38am
Bondy said | May 17th 2012 @ 7:38am | Report comment
I’ve always been against seven continents and thirty one other nations coming to this nation emerging in Melbourne and playing football ,we’ll derive no benefit as a nation what so ever,kids in Australia will never take this game up,and parents will never trust this sport,because its a migrant sport .
Australia’s game ,almost sounds xenophobic .
Have a think about it.
May 17th 2012 @ 8:02am
The Cattery said | May 17th 2012 @ 8:02am | Report comment
Which seven continents are we talking about?
May 17th 2012 @ 8:08am
Bondy said | May 17th 2012 @ 8:08am | Report comment
Afl asked the australian public and the government to back them in the spin stakes and they didnt .
May 17th 2012 @ 8:17am
The Cattery said | May 17th 2012 @ 8:17am | Report comment
Forget spin – which sport made the biggest contribution to the bid? in fact, only one sport made a material contribution!
This is the bizarre logic we’re dealing with here.
1. FFA wants to hold the WC
2. It has no material contribution to make.
3. AFL is the only sport making a material contribution
4. but somehow, the AFL is deemed to not have supported the bid
huh??
May 17th 2012 @ 8:33am
Redb said | May 17th 2012 @ 8:33am | Report comment
This article is naive on one level but has the right motive.
The arrogance of posters like Fussball, Its Aussie Rules knows no bounds and is one of the key reasons you have code wars – they can’t let go. They keep dredging up the past to justify their hatred of a sport.
This in turn drives others to polar reactions.
Like this:
Soccer fans blast the more transparent ‘Vlad’, AFL fans realise Frank Lowy had far more sinister notions with his Melbourne stadium intentions around the WC bid. He got called on it by AD and AD won.
Long live Australian football (the real one) and long may it frustrate the likes of Fussball and others with its existence in Australia.