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It has long been argued that Canberra has been either AFL or NRL heartland, but for much of its history it has been delicately poised as neither.
Neither one of Australia’s main codes are on top. Indeed, you could actually throw rugby into the mix and nearly describe the city as union heartland such is the relative closeness between the three codes.
A relative overview of the city’s footballing history would probably put Australian football on par or even slightly ahead of RL from the 1920s through to the 1980s, but that was when league slipped quite comfortably ahead, due to the addition of the Canberra Raiders.
That lead has been worn down in the last few years with GWS’ success and the Raiders’ struggles.
The city was built on the back of Victorian working class labourers and tradesman, along with plenty of transferring Victorian middle class public servants from the 1920s as Parliament moved from Melbourne.
But Canberra was surrounded by league-centric working class towns such as Queanbeyan, Goulburn, Yass and smaller hamlets. Farm labourers were needed and plentiful whom and in general they followed the rugby codes.
This leads us to a Canberra Times article where AFL boss Gillon McLachlan has stated a grand five-year plan to make Australian football the most dominant sport in Canberra, boosted by soaring participation numbers.
This plan comes on the back of where AFL Canberra boasted 125 junior teams this year – the first time they’ve had that many since 1984 and GWS selling out Manuka Oval in five of the club’s seven games at the venue.
However, let’s dig a bit deeper across local community football in Canberra and see what we find as far as numbers of senior teams goes. It is always a decent gauge of community interest, although that gauge as everywhere is somewhat tempered at a senior level because of work, injury concerns, families, time constraints and other factors that lead many capable adults to still follow a particular code but not necessarily play it.
In 2017 playing senior football within Canberra district competitions there were:
43 senior Australian football teams (11 women’s teams)
35 senior rugby league teams (7 women’s teams – inaugural women’s comp)
54 senior rugby union teams (6 women’s teams and a far wider geographical spread than either AF or RL)
(AAP Image/Dean Lewins)
What do these stats tell us? They tell me that the football demographics in Canberra are particularly split.
League, possibly due to the brutal collision sport that it is, is not the market leader. Unon is bigger than I thought it would be but includes many teams from NSW areas that AFL and rugby league have other leagues in, so is somewhat of an outlier.
As far as senior team numbers and sheer numbers go, rugby union is probably the market leader, at any rate it would be close.
Which brings us back to the AFL’s plan and bold statement. It is one thing for a code to think they want to become the market leader, but another to boldly state it. How will the AFL go about it?
They have suggested they will upgrade Manuka Oval and have big games at the venue, do more development work in schools, seek greater media exposure and strengthen the GWS academy to include more local boys and girls.
The above are all standard ideas and ideas that may or may not happen and there is probably stacks more I haven’t listed, but realistically without a AFL team based in Canberra I am not sure that even with a very liberal dose of optimism that the AFL will become the dominant market leader.
(AAP Image/Julian Smith)
Personally I see the status quo remaining, the other codes will fight tooth and nail to retain their market share and that is more than fair enough, it is actually a good thing for kids.
Both rugby codes have the perpetual ace up the sleeve of actually having a truly representative Canberra team. GWS will never be truly representative of Canberra and is more of a team that fulfils a footy fix for many people, although future generations may grow up barracking for GWS from Canberra as kids are now.
It did occur to me that Gillon has made these claims to put pressure on rival codes to use their resources to shore up heartland areas rather than branch out into new areas. Let’s face it, Gillon’s claims in three months let alone five years will probably be forgotten and he may not be even be at the AFL anymore.
Whatever happens, Canberra is definitely a curious case as far as football goes.
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