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With second teams being installed in NSW and Queensland, the following question must be asked: Where does the AFL expand to next?
With two teams in most states and representation in most territories, I believe the AFL nears saturation point in its home country, with possible exceptions being Tasmania and Canberra. However, I’d like to look at its overseas planning, especially in the local region, and see into my crystal ball.
For years now Papua New Guinea has had more registered Australian Rules players than anywhere else outside of Australia. It features junior programs run by AFL PNG, and has close ties with AFL Queensland. Indeed, many New Guinea players now play in the Cairns region.
There are several PNG players currently in AFL development – James Gwilt, the St Kilda 2010 Best and Fairest, has parents from Papua New Guinea. The now retired Mal Micheal was born in Papua New Guinea, with a Papuan father. 7500 people turned out to see the PNG national team defeat an Australian Indigenous squad in 2009.
Across the Tasman, New Zealand has more than 600 senior players in 19 teams across five leagues. There are several players currently on AFL lists and in development. Others have already retired, including the likes of Trent Croad and Wayne Shwass.
AFL exhibition matches have been reasonably well attended, with 11,000 people attending a match in 2000. Hawthorn are heavily involved in New Zealand, having recently created a schools program, which this year moves into more than 70 schools across New Zealand.
A number of recent announcements make the crystal ball interesting; first the decision to lump top teams from NSW, QLD and the NT together to form the North East Australian Football league (NEAFL).
Second the recent announcement of the Champions League between the different state league teams. Finally, the AFL’s declaration that it was willing to take on the Pacific Islands using its recent heavy weaponry in the form of Karmicheal Hunt and Israel Folau to the best of its advantage.
The North East Australian Football league is a two conference league, based on an amalgamation of the Queensland and ACT leagues.
It couldn’t be too hard to involve new Guinea and New Zealand in the new NEAFL competition. In doing so the AFL would become the first Australian league to embrace New Guinea, and the last of the codes to embrace New Zealand. People have pushed for pre-season or exhibition matches to be played in Port Moresby for years to no avail, and this should be addressed.
The NEAFL would finally give New Zealand and New Guinea players something to play for beyond the annual International Cup matches. A New Guinea team should be reasonably competitive in the NEAFL – we’re not talking the SANFL or WAFL standards here – and even New Zealand, who have beaten New Guinea at the International Cup, should get a fair go as well and benefit from playing against better teams without copping the floggings they are likely to receive in other states.
This then gives them a pathway to the new Champions League competition, which should prove a barometer as to how the game is going against genuinely good players.
There’s quite often a fine line between top line SANFL/WAFL/VFL players and AFL quality, and sometimes no distinction at all, as we’ve seen in recent years.
Let’s face it, these teams aren’t likely to get an AFL quality team any time soon, but these newly announced structures and junior development programs are essential to gauging the progress of the sport in the region. Like Hawthorn in New Zealand and Carlton, Collingwood and Fremantle in South Africa, the AFL should offer incentives to any club willing to spend time in New Guinea. Pre-season or NAB Cup matches should be played in these areas.
In fact, if the AFL was serious, it should offer the remaining clubs incentives to take a territory in the Pacific area and develop it along the same lines as Hawthorn.
The game is immensely popular in Nauru, for example. Recent articles in The Sydney Morning Herald suggest there are 800 AFL participants in Tonga, where the King has apparently suggested building an AFL academy and the AFL will seek to use the recently recruited Folau to raise the game’s profile. A South Pacific representative side will play in the under-16 championships in 2011.
Whilst some dream of teams in China and Los Angeles, I’d like to see a Pacific AFL structure, with teams representing New Zealand, New Guinea and the Islands included by expanding the NEAFL to include them, perhaps as a third Pacific conference.
As the development pathways become more stablised in these countries, there are going to be tangible benefits for the sport if the AFL Commission manages it right.
Local association football and rugby supporters will continue to scoff at the international aspects of Australian football, but given the Australian association football team quit the Oceania Confederation because it lacked competition and opportunity, it can hardly talk (its competition had included a 31-0 routing of the Samoa and a 13-0 thrashing of the Solomon Islands.
New Guinea was recently flogged by Australia and New Zealand in the Four Nations rugby league competition).
The battle for the Pacific is wide open.
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