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How can it be "Good" Friday without football?

28th March, 2013
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28th March, 2013
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Another Easter has rolled around, and once again we are faced with that eternal question: why can’t we have the AFL on Good Friday?

I mean, what are we doing here? Is this the Australian Football League or the Australian Faith League?

Why must Demetriou and friends remain so beholden to superstition that they ban our great game from this so-called holy day?

Are they taking orders from the Pope?

Is there some kind of Da Vinci Code-style conspiracy going on?

Is Opus Dei pulling the strings of the AFL Commission, using the innocent facade of football to launder its mysterious codexes and prevent the revelation of the identity of the blood descendant of Christ?

Seems far-fetched, doesn’t it? But doesn’t it seem even more far-fetched that a respectable sporting code would bend its knee to the religio-industrial complex and deny honest, hard-working Australians their Friday night thrills for the sake of appeasing the frocks-and-funny-hats brigade?

Even if you believe in a god who didn’t play for Geelong, why would you object to Good Friday football anyway?

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Does God dislike football? I find it a bit hard to accept an all-powerful being who doesn’t at least enjoy watching the odd game on telly.

Can we really worship a deity who doesn’t appreciate the beauty of a screamer, or the wonder of a banana from the pocket?

What, is he a soccer fan? Give me a break.

Now you might say that Good Friday is too solemn a day to play football on, being the day Jesus got nailed to the old t-sticks.

But as we’ve established above, God loves football, and since Jesus is God, he loves football too.

And don’t you think that on Good Friday, of all days, he could use some cheering up?

To be honest all the praying and Bible-reading and quiet reflection really bums him out: it can only remind him of the crucifixion. And if you’ve never been crucified, let me tell you, it is no picnic.

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A guy couldn’t help but want something to take his mind off such a traumatic memory.

Can’t we give him a nice footy match to boost his spirits? Hell, I’d wager that if they’d put Richmond v Carlton on while he was actually up on the cross, the time would have passed much more pleasantly.

It seems plain cruel to deny the bloke a bit of entertainment.

Of course some uptight squares, not naming any names Andrew, claim that the day is a day for families to be together, spending time in quiet sobriety free from the whirlwind of modern life.

They say on a day like Good Friday people don’t want the intrusion of football.

But I say so what? Let them shut their shutters and black out their windows: why make everyone else suffer?

Are we going to ban football on every day that there is someone who’d prefer not to have it intrude on their lives?

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I’d prefer football to not intrude on my life every day that Port Adelaide plays, but I don’t expect the world to bend to my whims. I let the Power get on with it and swallow my sorrow for the sake of the club’s fan.

The funny thing is that the NRL has no such religious restriction. They happily play rugby league on the holiest of holy days.

So this either means that the AFL is being foolishly wowserish, or that rugby league is inherently more evil than Australian Rules.

Either one seems entirely possible: after all the AFL doesn’t have cheerleaders; but then again rugby league has Tom Waterhouse on its telecasts.

So maybe the AFL is wowserish and rugby league is evil. Let’s not fall into a false dichotomy here.

But the point I’m getting at is that the no-football-on-Good-Friday rule is pointless, silly and irritating.

It’s not even irritating that there’s no football on Good Friday – there’s lots of days with no football – it’s just irritating that that’s the reason.

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What’s next? No cricket during Ramadan? No soccer for Chanukah? No… basketball on… whatever Buddhists have? It’s a slippery slope towards ridiculous hypotheticals and we can’t let ourselves slide down it.

Dammit, we should demand football on Good Friday. It’s bad enough we don’t have it on Christmas.

It’s time for us, as a society, to bite the bullet and admit there are more important things than God.

Or at least one more important thing.

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