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There are less than 50 days to go to the World Cup in South Africa. On the eve of the Australian national football team’s departure to compete in the greatest sporting event on the planet, they should hold on to the notion that they’re going with the blessing of all Australians.
However, some weeks ago a Victorian scribe took umbrage to an electronic sign, put out by Qantas, at the Etihad Stadium on the eve of the A-League Grand Final that stated, “Qantas supports Australian Football”.
From Adrian Musolino’s column: “As Stevens recently wrote on his Twitter page:” “I believe AFL should have exclusive rights to term Australian football. I can live with football alone but soc (soccer) is not Aus (Australian) footy.”
I would like to be clear on this point: the AFL does not own the name “Australian” or indeed the word “Football”. The AFL will tell you that it’s their given and moral right to the name in Australia, for their code to own exclusively the phrase “Australian Football”.
This is wrong.
Their legal name is AFL or Australian Football League, which is the legality, not Australian Football (part of), and if they were not so selfish they should have realised that.
There are four Australian football codes, not one, yet the AFL claims theirs is the anointed one. Not so. If they had the good sense, they should have realised that and named their code “Australian Rules Football.”
We have been told by the AFL advocates many times that the title football does not belong to football. Well let us football purists remind them that they on no account own the name Australian or the name Football and definitely not the term “Australian Football”, which is a phrase every Australian football writer will use in his or her articles, whether it’s on the 442 website, the World Game website or even here on The Roar website.
Qantas is the major sponsor of the ‘Qantas Socceroos’ who are about to fly the Australian national football team to their second consecutive appearance in the greatest football tournament of the world, where in the past four years 208 nations set out on a football qualifying process that has come down to the last 32 nations of the world.
These have been through a series of qualifiers and knockout matches with all nations naming their national football teams just that (bar a few exceptions).
I, for one, can no longer tolerate the AFL’s selfish notion that only they deserve to own the moniker “Australian Football”.
The FFA have made it clear that the tag “Australian Football” does not exclusively belong to the AFL.
Any national team in Australia, be it rugby union, rugby league or football, should be supported as Australian football on their world stage competing in their respective World Cups if they so desire to use the term or the phrase – and let that be known to the AFL and those who think otherwise.
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