How I wish it were not true. We talk plenty about football, whether it be the Association, the Australian, or the not-really-football-at-all rugby kind – we don’t need any more.
But football today has nonetheless found itself in the safe haven that is The Roar’s motorsport website, and we have no choice but to begrudgingly acknowledge its presence.
So we have to talk about football, but not just any football – a specific type of pre-grand prix football that works to not only extend the newsworthiness (‘newsworthiness’ used liberally in this sense) of a sport that isn’t Formula One motor racing while simultaneously detracting from the credibility of the Australian Grand Prix.
Yes, the particular scourge we must address is the dreaded ‘AFL ambassador’.
Fitting though it is that any sport in the sport capital of the world* (*so long as those capitals are A, F, and L) should somehow find a way to shoehorn as many football players as is possible into a press release without redirecting to AFL.com.au, this madness has to stop.
First a disclaimer. Absolutely this column recognises that without reference to the game played with the unusually shaped ball named Sherrin, attracting the commercial sport media to promote your event through the news is as likely as Bernie Ecclestone opening a Twitter account. This is life’s third certainty, after death and Felipe Massa answering a question with “for sure”.
It is for this reason we awkwardly send two unfortunate drivers to local sporting grounds to be asked whether they “watch the AFL back at home”, despite home being South America – they produce their bemused responses for the cameras and everyone goes home happy and with the soft tissue of their backs (largely) intact. Ahem.
But to inflate that single day of media excellence into two months of AFL – beginning with no fewer than two football players in January with Geelong’s Joel and Scott Selwood and extending into February with football-related model Brittany Davis – seems like overkill.
For every football player, model, ‘social influencer’ and ‘it’ girl signed up as the official face of a sport to which they are not at all related, another once-yearly opportunity to use our grand prix to grow motorsport goes begging.
Where are the young drivers, any number of whom would kill for some national exposure in their attempt to raise their profile and finances to make the jump overseas?
Is there no space for Luis Leeds, the F4 young-gun who was as recently as last year signed to the Red Bull Junior programme? Or what about Chelsea Angelo, who, at just 19, is blazing a trail for female drivers on her way to the V8 Supercars?
This next generation of Australian sporting talent – and there are scores of others racing against them and in other categories equally deserving of mention – is chronically undervalued by broader Australia despite the objectively impressive international goals so many of them score, yet the country’s flagship motor racing event is actively passing up ripe opportunities year after year to own a slice of the motorsport future.
The advantages? Using the power of Formula One in Australia to create a more sustainable fan-base. While no-one can deny motorsport in Australia has a powerful core following, the casual audience here remains small. However, can we blame the general public for unfailingly bringing the value of the race into question year after year when such minimal effort has been made to use motorsport to educate and excite?
The Selwoods might be great football players, but how effective have they been at instilling anticipation for the world’s fastest cars arriving on our doorstep?
The belittling attitude is particularly frustrating considering the organisers of the Australian GP do an otherwise outstanding job to put on an event of international acclaim.
But what aggravates the dismay above all else is that all three nominated faces of the grand prix come from the sport our race regularly has the misfortune of competing against in its opening month.
Though the timing of the race is obviously beyond Australia’s control, using three AFL names to promote an alternative sporting event in Melbourne forced to contend with the opening round of the AFL season is folly.
As we learnt in 2013, when every camera in Rod Laver Arena madly swivelled for a glimpse of Shane Warne catching a stray ball from a semi-final between Andy Scotland and Roger Someone, the public eye prefers to rest on the familiar. Putting more Good Old Fashioned Aussie Blokes in the frame isn’t making racing’s job any easier on its weekend of weekends.
The Australian motorsport community (and, for that matter, non-motorsport community) is done a great disservice by these decisions, because – and without taking anything from Ambassador Selwood, Ambassador Selwood, and Ambassador Davis, who are all undoubtedly equally upstanding individuals of Australian society and who are all excellent at what they do – we deserve more respect than this.
After all, football in all its codes already dominates the Australian news cycle almost year-round – would it really hurt that much to give motorsport a single week to itself?
Follow @MichaelLamonato on Twitter, where he is somewhat less belligerent.
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