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There has been a lot written about the football code war in Australia. It should be made clear that this is a war fought in Australia since 1880 and only recently taken overseas.
In Australia, the war is pretty much confined to Sydney.
Australia’s own code has been undermined in the nation’s largest capital city since day one, with the authorities eventually quashing the code by locking them out of the grounds needed to play the game.
It’s obvious why the Sydney market is so important. The three highest rating AFL games ever played have all involved the Sydney Swans.
It took a civil war within rugby league during the mid-90s and a star recruit known as ‘Plugger’ to get the Swans on the right path. Until these two things happened, AFL was dead in Sydney.
We then saw the brilliant Paul Roos and Stewart Maxfield take the wheel and create a winning culture that the Swans now live by.
Two premierships later and the Swans are now accepted and established as Sydney’s own AFL team. In saying that, the war still rages on.
In 2012, the AFL established their second army and named them Greater Western Sydney, or GWS Giants for short. To grab some headlines they also dropped a bag of money at the feet of a very talented league player, who knew very little about the game and exhibited no passion to play the sport.
Only last week that very player pulled the pin and decided to go back to playing league. The damage that this will cause the AFL and their new franchise could sting them for years to come.
The signing of Israel Folau was an appalling attempt by the AFL to make quick gains in Western Sydney.
Any good general will tell you, to win a war you have to win the hearts and minds of the natives. League fans already worry that their game is losing ground to the other football codes.
For the AFL to come in and kidnap arguably their best player for the best part of two years is wrong. If the AFL wants to do the right thing, they have to be prepared to lose a truckload of money for at least 25 years, just like they did with the Swans.
The only way this war will cease will be for the City of Sydney to accept AFL as another sport and not a threat to rugby league. And for the AFL to stop knocking their players off.
The second front the AFL has established extends from South Africa to New Zealand by way of Papua New Guinea. In doing so, the AFL are desperately throwing good money after bad with little to no effect, as these countries have no real meaning in terms of TV dollars.
The AFL only has one market that is important and that is the USA. The NFL commands a $15 billion dollar price tag, compared with AFL’s $1 billion dollar price tag.
Why? It’s simple. For every one Australian there are 15 Americans and the USA is a very rich country with massive promotional power.
The NBA recently saw Jeremy Lin establish himself and take the game in China to a new level. Why? Because Jeremy was of Chinese descent and spoke mandarin.
The AFL needs to get an American player on every team to create the interest needed. If only Mike Pyke was from the States. You get enough American’s following their own people and the ratings and success will follow.
You make your sport big in the largest westernised country in the world and you guarantee your code’s future. That’s how the war will be won.
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