From the recently completed Indigenous Round to controversies regarding starting times of games, there is plenty to talk about in the AFL this week.
1. Indigenous Round
The Dreamtime at the G game between Essendon and Richmond marked it’s 10th anniversary on the weekend. This year, the AFL took Indigenous Round a step further with all teams donning Indigenous jumpers featuring Aboriginal art designs.
There have been some horrendous eyesores of AFL jumpers over the years, but in the Indigenous Round all teams got it right. They simplified their jumpers, giving the artwork a blank canvas on which to be showcased. It produced some great jumpers.
In particular I liked the simplicity of the Melbourne design with the MFC monogram. Even Hawthorn, a serial offender with bad jumpers, produced a well designed jumper.
If clubs are looking for clash jumpers, they would be well advised to consider using their Indigenous Round jumpers – they were a lot better than most of the clash jumpers over the years.
The AFL also played a match for premiership points at Alice Springs for the first time as Melbourne hosted Port Adelaide. Despite recent forays into regional centres such as Launceston, Cairns and Darwin, the game in Alice Springs was the first time an AFL home-and-away game had been played in a location with a population less than 100,000 people. The Alice has a population of 30,000.
Despite a modest crowd of 6,555, both the AFL and Melbourne said they were keen to continue games in Alice Springs. Could this possibly be the catalyst for smaller regional centres to lobby for AFL fixtures?
Ballarat has hosted pre-season matches for North Melbourne and the Kangaroos occasionally make noises about wanting to play a regular season game there but could it now be reality?
Could other regional centres also try to get in on the act? Bendigo, Wangaratta, Wagga Wagga have all hosted AFL pre-season games. Does their relative proximity to existing AFL venues in Melbourne, Sydney and even Canberra mean it’s unlikely they will see an AFL fixture other than in pre-season?
2. Peta Searle
It has been covered but it is definitely a story worth telling. Peta Searle became the first woman employed as a coach at an AFL club when she was appointed as a development coach at St Kilda.
A woman breaking into the male-dominated world of the AFL as a coach is a significant day in history and there is no hint of tokenism in this appointment. Searle has done the hard yards, putting her teaching career on hold to work as an assistant coach at VFL club Port Melbourne.
Her story is one of hard work dedication and sacrifice with the odds stacked against her – a story every bit as good, if not better than any background story of an AFL player.
All power to her and hopefully she has a long and successful coaching career in the AFL.
3. Game start times
I know the good people of Adelaide are flocking to the new Adelaide Oval but surely the AFL is pushing the friendship by scheduling games there at 12:40pm on a Sunday.
Sure 49,000 fans turned up – the biggest crowd that Gold Coast have played in front of – but really 12:40pm to start a game of footy? It’s just not cricket.
Foxtel wants two games on a Sunday, so with the twilight game locked in at 4:40pm it makes sense to start the earlier game at 1:40pm AEST.
This provides a three-hour broadcast window and bringing it in line with the Saturday afternoon match start times of 1:40pm and 4:40pm.
Instead the early afternoon Sunday game starts at 1:10pm AEST, meaning it’s a 12:40pm start in Adelaide, or as in Round 2 this year a 12:10pm start for the Brisbane Lions v Geelong game a the Gabba due to no daylight savings in Queensland.
I know the TV dollars are king but surely pushing back half an hour will not unduly affect the coffers at AFL House too much?
That is almost it for the hot topics this week – there is just one more to mention. Josh Bootsma, has there been a stranger way to get delisted?
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