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NRL (National Rugby League) CEO David Gallop, AFL (Australian Football League) CEO Andrew Demetriou and former FFA (Football Federation Australia) CEO John O'Neill talk to the media.
Some deny its existence; others declare it as the war that is consuming Australia. The code wars, like it or lump it, are becoming a national obsession as fans defend their respective codes like religious zealots defending their respective Gods.
Debate about the code wars was reignited this week with an interesting series of articles on The Punch, which used the commencement of the AFL season to put the spotlight on the battle of the winter codes.
What’s fascinating about reading the respective arguments for and against each major winter code (AFL, NRL and Rugby) is how subjective it all is. So much of it is simply personal taste, with none of the writers putting in a solid argument for why their code should rule them all,
This is for the simple reason that they really can’t argue such a statement.
The reality is that there is a battle between the codes for your dollars; this is simple economics. The codes operate in the same markets, crossover in the same cities more often than not, and take place at the same time.
To suggest otherwise is short sighted.
As they expand into each other’s heartlands, as is happening now, it’s only natural that the discussion and debate intensifies.
But the reality is that the various codes’ existence is not dependant on expansion into these new regions. Even if they fail, they still have their respective heartlands to fall back on.
The AFL will not disappear entirely. It is far too embedded in Australian culture. It means too much to too many of us to merely fade away in a matter of decades.
To suggest otherwise is ridiculous.
Football will not become the dominant code in our lifetimes. Rugby League and Union will not conquer the southern states.
Such logic is at that heart of the arguments made by the proponents of the code war.
These viewpoints tend to border on the extreme.
Some football fans insist it will be only a matter of decades before they rule supreme at the expense of other football codes.
In the book Soccernomics, by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, it’s suggested that thanks to the rise of the Socceroos and the high participation rates of kids playing the round ball game compared to Aussie Rules and the rugby codes, in “a century from now, Aussie Rules might exist only at subsidized folklore festivals.”
Once again, this logic is flawed, and grossly underestimates the cultural value and importance of a code such as the AFL to so many people.
This won’t change significantly in our lifetime as the reality is that in the past fifty decades, there has been little change in the Australian sporting landscape. The AFL still rules Victoria, the rugby codes rule NSW and Queensland,.
And on it goes.
Football will continue to grow its niche audience, but that is the only significant development we are likely to see.
GWS and Gold Coast FC will not kill rugby, likewise the Melbourne Rebels and Heart won’t kill the AFL.
Perhaps, then, the code war moniker needs to change.
War insinuates that only one code will emerge from the battle victorious; that all the rest will fall by the wayside; and that co-existence is not possible.
All those points are, frankly, nonsense.
Perhaps code battles would be a more apt description than code wars, reflecting the competition between the codes, particularly in the intense battlegrounds such as western Sydney, without the melodrama of war and all its connotations of one code’s eventual supremacy.
It’s time for supporters and administrators of each code to put down their weapons and celebrate the diversity of Australian sport.
That diversity is being lost in the current climate of a flawed war.