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Some Aussie Rules fans seem to want their cake and eat it. Let me explain. AFL is the most popular football code in the country. There can be no argument about that. AFL has zero international participation. About that view there is argument – at least from some AFL fans.
On more than one occasion over the years while discussing this issue with aussie rules fans I was told that one of the virtues of their game was its uniquely Aust origin and culture and that they were untroubled by its strictly domestic following. I had no reason to doubt the sincerity of their beliefs. However a more cynical person than I might suggest that they had no choice but to make such a statement.
According to the AFL website, aussie rules is played in over 20 countries. Yet the only national representation Australian footballers can aspire to is the on again off again International Rules series against Irish Gaelic footballers. I am still waiting to be advised the name and place of a single domestic international rules league or indeed one of its constituent clubs. International Rules was the brainchild of one Harry Beitzel who was desperate for (then) VFL footballers to have overseas competition. And this I think is the mainly unspoken and silent pain carried in the souls of large numbers of AFL fans.
We can watch our cricketers, socceroos, wallabies, basketballers, netballers, hockey and lawn bowls teams – even kangaroos – but not a national representative Australian rules team. Publicly AFL supporters do not seem particularly concerned by this matter – privately, for some at least I’m not so sure.
SWOT analysis might suggest that the complete absence of credible overseas competition is a weakness, possibly a threat and barely an opportunity. Lately we have seen AFL games played in Sth Africa and the UAE. There has been much written on this site by aussie rules aficionados about the seemingly unending internationalization of their game. ‘Watch this space’, we were recently urged, as if a dramatic football revolution was about to unfold.
I don’t think anything is about to unfold – or ever will. I fear that my AFL loving fellow Australians are experiencing a false dawn. Because after 150 years (or so we’re told) aussie rules football has failed to conquer NSW and Qld let alone planet Earth.
The efforts of expats to take their piece of Australiana with them is nothing if not admirable. But willing amateurs do not equate to a meaningful & significant presence.
The relevant and respective indigenous football codes/winter sports will not even notice. During the 2003 Rugby World Cup the SMH’s chief AFL correspondent (Vic born & bred) Richard Hinds wrote questioning rugby’s and the cup’s credentials to global sport status. Fair enough. However I wonder what Richard’s assessment would be if he was to cast his critical eye over AFL’s international stable. The AFL sojourn to foreign lands reminds me of the American flags planted on the moon. Nice for the family photo album but of absolutely no substance.
AFL fans should celebrate a uniquely Australian game providing healthy choices for our youth & its pre-eminent position amongst the football codes of this country. But don’t demean yourselves by indulging in the delusion of a nonexistent impending international Australian rules epiphany. Its fiction.
As my father used to tell me – you can’t have your cake & eat it.
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