Demetriou calls the kettle black

awesome are we going to see this comment every week? perhaps we could refer to the fact attendances are down in the last 2 rounds of the NRL compared to the corresponding rounds last year, or that after the massive turnout in round 1, the NRL attendances dropped by nearly half for the next two rounds. Maybe its just that people have less money to spend on sport or something.

how does such a pointless, nothing thread get so many replies - it seems a lot of football fans are still venting. get over it. the afl had nothing to do with us losing the bid. one reason we will never host the world cup until our population increases substantially - location, location, location. we were never going to get close - and the powers behind the bid were simply living out the first stage of an impossible dream. waste of time & money. and yes the afl hopefully loses crowds and money this year - they have become purely profit driven and are moving the game into some perceived middle of the road appeal. afl fans need to send a message - i wont be attending any games or watch delayed tv games. had enough.

your kidding me Duke, the hypocrisy of your comment is hilarious. You take about people whinging and writing dribble. How about the infamous "Soccer Fans the Worst" article in the Herald-Sun??? One of the most pathetic, slanderous and code rubbishing articles ever written. And it appeared on the front page of a newspaper! Instantly forming a false image of football (soccer) to hundreds of thousands of people. Disgrace!

AL. Well said.

The solution was simple MLF, the WC could have been carried out in all states except Victoria. Then there would have been no interuption to the AFL season. What the AFL did was one carry out a strategy that it has for decades. But according to you we whing a lot over what is our own fault. The vic rules is blamless. Yeah right. And I quote from a site called Das Libero "For decades soccer’s rivals had cruised along with virtually no competition. However with each new season in the 1950s they grew restive and even reactionary over soccer’s growth. The strongest responses were found in the Australian Rules states. Particular schools banned soccer and education authorities in charge of school sport were known to hinder the game as best they knew how. For example, staff at White Hills Technical School, Bendigo did not so much ban soccer outright as ban instead the use of school funds for soccer equipment. As early as 1951 buckets of glass were scattered on North Hobart Oval the night before a Tasmanian representative side took the fireld against a visiting English Professional XI. Next season the VFL directed its operatives to secure all available public sporting space in Melbourne in order to stifle the burgeoning threat posed by soccer’s migrant-inspired growth. Similar moves had been made in 1927 and 1928 when British migrants so rattled the VFL that it wrote “with alarm” of this “foreign code”. The 1950s boom in migration promised to be far more of a problem than that of the 1920s. In 1958 a Melbourne soccer club sought to lease a council ground usually used by an Australian Rules club. In response to the application one rules-supporting sneer, “let them play . . . in the gutter”. Melbourne’s reputation for paranoia was crowned in 1965 when youths daubed anti-soccer slogans over Middle Park, chopped down the goalposts and tried to set fire to the grandstand. (59-60)" What you read above is aust rules strategy to remain without competition. What they did during the WC bid was no different to what they did in the past.

I think maybe 20 articles 'against' the AFL would suffice after that pathetic piece of work by The Sun-Herald. "Soccer Fans the Worst".

"This is the sort of lies we have to put up with from you AFL supporters" Lies? No, it's the truth. I don't take pleasure in the A-League's failures, and neither do most Australian Football supporters on this site (AFL is the name of the league). But hey, think what you want; if you want to think that the AFL is suffering fallen fortunes based on almost no evidence whatsoever, that is your choice. BTW, I'm curious, how many Australian Football supporters publish articles on this site with the sole purpose of attacking the A-League or soccer? Lies, my foot. "and now our comments are being censored like communist Russia or Nazi Germany." Putting aside the fact that Nazi Germany was responsible for the murders of 6 million Jews (and Communist Russia wasn't such a nice place either), the fact that you would compare the Roar to those places is absurd. Not only does it indicate that you are completely out of touch with the real world, but that you are are so indulgant as to compare your so-called treatment on a sports blog with two of the worst regimes of all time is incredibly offensive! Oh, and BTW, there is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech, and on a moderated site, you can't expect all your comments to be published. "AFL will stop at nothing till they take over the world" Are you serious? I wonder, do you check for AFL executives under your bed every time you go to sleep? BTW, even if AFL does want to 'take over the world' (which they don't), so what? Is the AFl forbidden from expanding? "so it must be disappointing for you when AFL interest starts to fall." One round! One round! You're basing falling interest on one round! MF, do you want to know why your comments don't get published? It's because you post paranoid comments whose sole purpose is to denigrate the AFL and are based on almost no evidence whatsoever!

Wookie the relocation was definitely on until they started to sink on the GC. Up here they were marketed as the GC Kangaroos. Andrew D promised them that he was going to move all the players families at the expense of the AFL. The Gold Coast folk believed they had a team in GC Kangaroos. But yes they cowarded away after some dismal attendances. You are in denial..

Fair enough. :D

Check back before that, feelers were coming from Southport since before Port Adelaide were admitted in 1996. So any team that went up there was in response to that. And several teams went. The AFL will never base a team in Darwin or Cairns, both lack the infrastructure and sponsor support needed for a permanent AFL club. The AFL wrote its strategic plan in 2006 which said that it wanted teams in Western Sydney and Gold Coast by 2015. When North refused to relocate, the AFL setup a team. The AFl had been playing there well before that though. The relocation move was NEVER on. North flatly refused to go.

yes and they are all about the same thing. Etihad stadium. Compensation was an issue brought up by NRL clubs that the AFL gets blamed for.

ICF's comment was ridiculous, as is yours. He wrote an article after just one game (!), and now both he and you are basing it on just one round. Come back to us at the end of the season; otherwise don't complain about the way you've been 'treated.' "Look forward to posting more about falling AFL crowds and ratings next week." Therein lies the crux of it. For some twisted reason, you take pleasure in the AFL's falling fortunes (even if it is imaginary), while I don't know of any Australian Football supporters who regularly post on Roar, who take pleasure in the A-League's failures. Yet you wonder why not all your posts make it through?

gawa you are making the mistake of equating an attack on FIFA as being an attack on the game itself. The game exists in spite of FIFA, not because of FIFA. They're pigs at the trough, dining out on the riches that that game is capable of producing, lining their own pockets.

Agree about Ange, seems a affable sort of bloke, but he is not a CEO, and maybe is not cut out for it, AD is brash, in your face, and upfront, whilst some people dont like it, to be anything else is not his style, he is playing the hand dealt to him. IMO he does a great job, can you think of anyone else that you would like running your sport?.

I can't speak for 'rabid' football fans, I can however give an example of political awareness and indeed plain good manners from the recent appearance of Brisbane Roar coach Ange Postocoglou on the ABC show 'Onsiders' I think it is called. While the rest of the panel talked about a variety of sports he was cautious when choosing his words so as to avoid insulting these other sports. Thanks for your concern over my dummy spit as you so nicely put it, it means a lot to me especially coming from such an esteemed source as your good self. I have never been called thin skinned before, usually the polar opposite. Hence why I don't spend my time on tags for sports that I don't follow because they just don't get under my thick skin like football does yours - good luck with that.

OK, after 450 comments on this thread and nearly 600 on the corresponding one about attendance for round 1 I have to ask - how do you people do it? I love a good code war as much as the next Roarer so I'm not claiming any moral high ground, but I'm genuinely flabbergasted at the stamina of some of you blokes. Literally hundreds and hundreds of comments by the same 5 or 6 contributors, all saying pretty much exactly the same thing. Don't you ever get bored? Or tired?