Why are so many Australians threatened by the A-League?

Says the person who is drowning in the sea of their own BS.

Yes and now we have to listen to these clowns carrying on as if they discovered that women like to play sport!

Well played Sachin Tuckerman. A comments machine.

northerner thanks i should have worked it out myself after about 3 years on here do i win a prize for being the first comment over 600

#Midfielder Pretty well. Consider too - TheRoar is a nice multi code (with flaws) format. BigFooty is okay but I don't like getting too caught up on that. The variety of ideas expressed on theRoar is normally pretty healthy. Generally my interest is caught on the home page so I don't got searching any tab in particular looking for a threat to sabotage. I think my motivation currently is to engage Mr.Orange in a land way in Asia.......so to speak. He's elusive though. I generally only come across him after he's made his mistake which tends to be too late.

I reckon someone else has probably logged in and commented in the meantime, so here i am with hopefully number 600. is that a record? Anyway, I reckon it's good for football fans to hear some different opinions from people who dont follow Association football as their number 1 sport. it gives a different perspective that I as a football fan often hadn't thought of.

PB OK and thanks for the reply ... If I understand your post you are saying you are a tad bored with talking about say AFL to like minded people as its not engaging enough and you don't wanta jink your team with a prediction.... So you look at other sports and you know enough about Football to understand and comment... and then you engage with some of Football folk more than others who you see make claims you feel are gilded with the lily... Hope I got it right

#Midfielder A little secret - I follow AFL but don't spend much time talking it (online) because of the know it alls. Also - predicting good things for ones club/players is to tempt 'Murphy' and his legal malaise of laws and ironies. Best not go there. With respect to other sports - there are conversations to be had from which I can learn something, or, contribute something - however..... and do take note of how some of these things happen - someone like a Mr.(Brian) Orange or Mr. (Bob) Brown makes a totally stupid remark and because it's a Friday afternoon or the like - one engages them - invariably, the MO of these folk is to leave the stupid comment in place and not return to defend it - meanwhile everyone else has gone off on a silly tangent based on that starting point. That happens an awful lot. After that -a thread like this - the serious posters have been and gone - I didn't really engage with this thread then - but now, we're just bulltishing really as a bit of fun. There's no real argy-bargy left in it or us now. Does that make sense?? (and the cricket threads - I can only shoot down the 'The Australian team should be made up of the NSW XI' protagonists so many times for it to be fun.)

Mid, This question has been asked many times & never had we had a proper reply. Look at Mister Football a prolific writer on the football tab, yet he has quoted as saying 'he finds football hard to watch even at the best of times'. I think we know why!!!!!

PB Serious question, and given I hardly ever read or comment by posts from non football folk then this is kinda me saying OK I will listen to you... My serious question, AFL has no challenge in Melbourne and I doubt any Football follower in Australia thinks anything else, for that matter in the southern states the 11 odd million people in the cities and regional towns support and follow AFL. You have some of the worlds best crowds averages. You have a media deal of enormous size. So why do some many AFL fans, spend so much time on Football [soccer] related matters, often questioning anything positive said? I have been posting on the Roar almost from when it started and have posted 3 times on the AFL tab in 9 years. Each time it was a specific question BTW. I post sometimes on the Rugby thread less lately but I like Rugby, and sometimes on Manly my NRL team but not often. Again why do you think so many AFL fans feel the need to post on a code, are they scared or something as its very strange, you don't see for example Gridiron fans all over Football forums in the states .... I just can't work it out... your thoughts would be appreciated..

"In Sydney those sorts of artticles on football have dried up." How much of that is due to the untimely death of Rebecca Wilson? Western Sydney's poor run of form has also seen them shed a few bandwagon fans In my experiences, flares are often lit by people that only come along to high profile games like Derbies and rivalry games because they know they'll be able to blend into the bigger crowd and get away with it :( If Wanderers start winning regularly again, I hope they don't return to make up for lost time.

#Kasey and #MarkfromCroydon Yeah - 600 is close isn't it. The reality of the size of the AFL pie in Melbourne vs 1 decent A-League club (still smaller membership/crowds than the lowest AFL club in Melb) and an ordinary A-League club - the simple metrics dictate the Herald Sun do as it does. The H-S is doing about as well as anyone in a very troubled sector - they could be doing worse such as the Age. Double standards - the irony is that my dislike of their declining reporting/journalistic standards are such that I don't buy the paper, we used to get it home delivered about 3 days a week. It seems you can't please everybody. The H-S though is no great friend of the AFL - they don't do many favours - are just as likely to misrepresent and sensationalise. What a lot of soccer fans don't understand is what goes on around issues in other codes. The H-S has a track record - certainly I followed a couple of topics very closely and the H-S pretty well mucked up the illicit drugs policy reporting and showed ignorance/negligence. Even the FFA's FIFA WC bid was horribly handled in the H-S. They just aren't very good (anymore, if ever they were). However - I suspect that cosying up to the FFA for example would not significantly change their fortunes - as many on theRoar seem to feel that other than being effectively an all (vs nothing) soccer journal would be the only acceptable outcome??

Mark that's Melbourne for you. In Sydney those sorts of artticles on football have dried up. Rugby league, football and rugby union have co-existed in Sydney for many years and not every area of Sydney is NRL dominant eg. North Shore is rugby union heartland. Western Suburbs and south Western Sydney is football heartland. AFL is dominant all across Melbourne

Re the argument that football fans have a chip on their shoulder and there is no real bias against football in the Australian media, I just wish to point out the following.I'm not sure how much it happens nowadays, but 25-35 years ago, I used to go to maybe 5-15 VFL/AFL games a year and I used to see fights in the crowd at probably every 3rd or 4th (1980's) or 4th or 5th match (1990's on). That didn't used to get reported on and to me it seesm it was generally accepted as part of the culture of the sport. At the same time, from the mid 1980's onwards, I started attended NSL games and I can tell you, virtually every incident of crowd disturbance was reported in the paper, and often on t.v and the radio. This week I undertook a little experiment. Every time a flare goes off at the A-League, there is a report in the Herald Sun (HS) and a barrage of comments in reply that "there's flares because soccer's so boring" which the Herald Sun duly publishes. I submitted a comment to HS along the lines that the flare that was let off this week at the tennis was because the tennis was so boring. Did it get published? No. Subjective editing and moderation from HS.

Kasey, that is exactly right. There is a subtle but huge difference in the way incidents at the football are reported from incidents at other sports such as Aussie Rules or Cricket or Tennis. Theres also a huge difference in the public response to those reports. Take for example this week at the tennis. At the tennis, there have been flares and a reported sexual assault. There has not been any reporting or commenting that the tennis event is a dangerous event to attend or 'un-Australian" due to these incidents, there have not been comments that the sport is so boring that is why there are these crowd disturbances/incidents. Imagine the headline or public comments if this stuff happened at a football match. Even the Kyrgios incident has been reported as if the sport itself is not the issue, but he, as an isolated individual has acted in a way that is 'out of character' with the sport, even though there are heaps of players who swear, argue with tumpire and destroy their equipment. There was even a 'celebratory' video of another player losing his temper and smashing his racquet. Compare that to reporting on football.

Perry, I'm only continuing because of the 600 milestone being so close ;-) The Herald Sun (and indeed News Limited) is an interesting one. It has become the 'enemy' for quite a number of hardcore football fans. I don't think its too hard to see why..the double standards they clearly employ in covering football versus covering AFL in the southern States obviously exist to pander to their core audience. My thoughts are to question when does a news organisation sit back and ask are we still on the pulse here? Are we still delivering the news or are we partaking in a bit of editorialising and pumping up stories we're more comfortable with at the expense of ones our staff are not across. I ask this because as the demographics change, newspaper circulations continue to drop. How much of that is new media and how much of it is Newspapers failing to recognize their audience has changed? we're more multicultural than ever before and the old staples of whipping up hysteria against people that look or act different to us might be getting a bit on the nose? (but then as Brexit/Trump shows western countries are not the big beautiful liberal melting pots the "liberal elites" at the Guardian and their ilk like to hope we are) All I'm saying is that in only 20 years the sporting landscape has changed very dramatically and I don't really see that being reflected in the Herald Sun's output. I think most rational football fans are not that different to everybody else, we just want to be treated in a fair and reasonable manor. It annoys me no end the perpetrating of stereotypes like Sokkah fans as lawless hooligans and attempting to create the impression that attending A-League games is somehow more dangerous than attending the cricket or footy. As with Newton's Laws there is a reaction to to this and it can most often be seen by the aggressive vibe given off by the people who police and supervise domestic football games. Some Police seem to think a riot is going to break out at any instance and some show absolutely no understanding of the way football fans demonstrate their support being not dangerous but just different to what the're used to. Any positives to be gained by the noted improvement in behavior (reduction in flares lit) that has been reported in the Herald Sun will be absolutely blown away by the next time they manage to report a death at a soccer game somewhere in the world and get to put Death and Soccer in the same headline.

Boys, we have just fallen short of the 600 mark. lets get there

nearly as good as David Lord

#Kasey I don't think I accused you of that either. I suspect we're pretty well on the same page on this - it's what the codes must do however if in your phrasing "to strategically turn eyes away from their competitors over the Summer period" you mean the eyes of rusted on AFL fans to avoid them wandering too much (no way the AFL can stop them, really, having a 'summer sport' or 2 is as ancient as the game), or, do you imply trying to divert eyes/attention away from for example the A-League. In which case again - good luck on that path given the A-League has new live content each weekend plus FFA Cup plus other events. So - for me - it really seems like a nothing complaint - the AFL must run some administrative functions during the off season - but it's all wrapped up before December/January when AFL news dries up to a trickle. btw - looking at a comment like #Chris "the Herald Sun delivered to my hotel room and it was wall to wall AFL. What a joke", the thing to recall is that in Melb for example - I grew up tuning in from the country to any of the 6 radio stations (3LO, XY, DB, GL {Geelong}, UZ {horse races} and KZ from memory) calling the VFL action on a Saturday afternoon (when around the grounds really was around the grounds). Before that in the '60s 7 of the 8 stations broadcast the VFL and 3LO (ABC) didn't but later they joined in too. That the biggest distribution newspaper positioned itself to this market should be no surprise. What is ironic - I hear about 'streaming' via devices etc now - and I think isn't that what we did in the old days - just, listening on the radio rather than watching video (granted, video on demand is nice but tuning in live - if driving or walking around, the radio and it's non-visual oriented commentary is still king.) Anyway - that was a bit of an aside.

#Perry Please point out the post on this thread where I've said that the AFL deliberately attacks football? In actual fact I have been complimentary to the AFL for the smart way they run their media strategy to ensure they control the message as often as possible. I think you have conflated in your head my posts with those of someone who sees conspiracy against football at every turn?