For its own sake, Channel Ten should do a lot more with the A-Leagues

I imagine there are many fans like me who feel left behind by the A-League with this new arrangement. I just can’t justify another subscription service. I’ve already got three others that have things I watch, and I’m not losing Kayo as I follow a team in the English Championship and watch other sports as well. I just have to settle for watching the free-to-air game once a week, whatever it is! Very frustrating last Saturday night as Sydney FC were (apparently!) back in form while I sat and watched Victory V Western Utd!

mine was a very lazy answer though, I have to say

You already had. I was responding specifically to the points you raised. Meant no offence.

why not reply to Stu's question?

I'd imagine the point is if the game of your local city is on FTA, it acts as a deterrent to physically attending with the knock impact on attendances etc I did notice the Goal Rush style PiP for when WUN scored vs City so that was a good measure

minimus and disnick enjoy the weekend A League action. Some good games coming up.

yes, read it a while back now. I much prefer to reference primary sources rather than books, being someone else's presentation of facts, it's much tougher but it's the only way to work much of the military stuff. More often I will use a book for the bibliography and Notes. On my current project, a major biographical work, I did come across a game of Ausy Rules played in London in 1942 on a rectangular ground as a demonstration, and also a kicking exhibition as a curtain raiser to a service representative match in London. The pre-game publicity release was about the world's fastest game, big kicks, but I can't find any post match comment. No match report that I can see, no more games. Some VFL players played rugby in England, some did very well but many just did not have the time, in wartime. I did post a reply earlier with a link to a Trove newspaper article about a meeting in Qld of Ipswich and Brisbane football clubs around 1876 to form a Qld Football Association, which was rejected (by an influential individual it seems) in favour of playing to Rugby and Melbourne Rules. King Edward still at work after 500 years. Then another article about confusion among the Brisbane football clubs over these new rugby rules. Reading these articles, albeit briefly, I'm not convinced the development of football in Australia is so clear cut as some describe. A cursory glance tells me the game was being played, in the military as early as 1800, and in clubs as far afield as Brisbane in the 1870s, and gave way rather than came later, but that would need a whole lot more research to confirm, and time which I don't have at presen.

Over the time - - I've toyed with writing a book (just for myself) about the "football family - with a focus on the position of Australian Football within that 'family'. So - - a lot of NLATrove searching and editing over the years. And reading historic books - - mostly relating to Aust Football but with awareness of what theories/ideas have evolved. And read a lot of extracts from books online etc. One interesting read is "Town life in Australia" by Richard Twopeny. A series of essays into book form where he - coming out from England - contrasted Melb, Syd and Adelaide across a number of areas, social/cultural/economic/architectual etc etc. His observation was that while in England the young gentleman played 'football' at school; once he'd left school then that tended to be that whereas in Melbourne the local football was more of a community event played for the local club. He described thus: “A good football match in Melbourne is one of the sights of the world… The quality of the play… is much superior to anything the best English clubs can produce… there is much more ‘style’ about the play”. I was delighted when I found a copy of Twopeny's book in an op shop in regional Victoria. btw - re military and sport - - have you read "The Changi Brownlow"? A very good read.

I didn't come here to cann the A-League. Look at my original comment again. I made a comment canning the administrators. The AFL Salary Cap for last year was $14.7m for each club. Each club has 44 players on its list. That's $334,000 on average, which is down due to the Salary Cap adjustments resulting from COVID & the TV rights media agreements (which pays most of the player wages) being renegotiated, along with ticket sales being decimated by nearly half. Still, not too bad, considering. Using the AFL's data, the Salary Cap was projected to be just under $400,000 per player come the 2022 season, otherwise. 44 players x 18 = 792 contracts. As I said: it's a big industry here in Australia, even compared to the big boys in Europe. A lot of opportunities, even if you suck at other sports. :silly: I've enjoyed the chat. Have a lovely weekend.

what is your primary source here MM?

re the games of football player prior to codification - - in Melbourne (given it was founded 1835) - and what I've seen re Sydney - early on it would be on a public holiday..........the queens birthday for example with community level picnic day and athletics and perhaps some playing "at football". By what rules?? Who knew. And whether that involved argument from people from different regions back in England........or Scotland or Ireland etc. In Melbourne the term "barracking" relates to the odd football game played near/against the soldiers from the Victoria Barracks. And that too was prone to change as depending on what region the regiment had come from in Britain. In many respects - the military terminology and structure of the 'formation' games like Rugby were arguably very much part of the militaristic cultural indoctrination of the future soldiers of the empire (kinda presented as "masculine Christianity"). In the papers - letters - that I was referring to earlier - there was one reference to 'old Rugby' as distinct to the codified RFU game. I do ponder on that. In some respects - - and this comes down to those who try to attribute Melbourne Rules footy as being a derivation of Rugby - - the question is this: is Rugby a handling game or are Handling games a form of Rugby. Then of course there's those who regard 'football' as what you play on your feet; when you haven't got a horse to play polo on. The Melbourne game came about due to a conflict as to what rules to play by; and they'd tried out some form of 'Rugby' rules but that wasn't popular. (new/old/school????). The people on the 1859 first rules committee (4 members of both the MCC and MFC) included an Irishman, a couple of Englishmen and Tom Wills (Australian born, part educated at Rugby.....more on sports than academia). The journo Thompson brought copies of the rules of the games from Rugby, Eton, Harrow and Winchester. They met at the pub of Jerry Bryant - who was also in the MCC/MFC and he played cricket at Surrey and they had their own 'house rules' of football. And their rules published 1849 are interesting - - kicking over the goal rope but they had the ball 'tossed up' in the centre of the ground. The irony is the Melbourne rules initially began with a kick off - as per rule 2. So that wasn't an original rule. The main remaining original rules are the goal not being touched or deflecting off the posts; the mark; no throwing and ideally throwing the ball in after going out of bounds (and the terminology....not about going into 'touch'). So it was a tapestry. When you look at the original rules of Melbourne 1859 and those of the FA 1861/62 and both had a fair catch and no cross bar. Most the rules were pretty light on so play was kinda either implicitly understood......or open to evolution/interpretation. And a big issue was the legality or otherwise of hacking, tripping and pushing!!!

I would be very surprised that if you looked at the 800 contracts available that the average would be $400K. But I would have to take your word for it. Now, I certainly don't call the AFL a backwater competition. AFL bats well above it's weight for a mono culture sport & for a middling economy country (unlike US). Anyone who doubts the passion of the game in its heartland has not got it eyes open. Like I said below, enjoyed our discussion when being civil to each other. I do think the A-League has a lot to learn from the the way the AFL is run. However, when you come in swinging in regards to the A-League which what I find unusual, especially for someone who loves sport. The A-League is not the no 1 competition in this country & it's not the biggest & best football competition in the world, like the other 200 plus nations. The A-League could do a lot things much better, no doubt, but it does alright for a country that has struggled for so long as a footballing nation. So I'm curious on why the dislike so much of it from a sports loving fan?

"Each is a separate country with their own parliament. It’s an odd one for us to grasp, what gets me is that they all have seats in England’s parliament which doubles as the British parliament." In constitutional terms, it's one country. Britain is a unitary system within which the national parliament has devolved powers to regional assemblies, much like what happened in Spain and France which, like Britain, are collections of distinct, but interrelated, ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups. "what gets me is that they all have seats in England’s parliament which doubles as the British parliament. The North Irelanders recently held the balance of power in GB (may still, not sure)." If Scotland ever succeeds in gaining full independence, their seats in the house of commons would not longer exist. Northern Island's Democratic Unionist Party held the balance of power between 2017 and 2019, before the Tories won a majority at the most recent general election. EU withdrawal might have looked quite different had they remained in a powerful position.

I'm not saying football is a bad option. I'm simply saying it's not as good an option for an aspiring elite player in this country compared to AFL. Thank about it: there are more people playing football in this country than AFL, yet vastly less opportunity to play at the elite level. It's simple maths. Secondly, although there are infinitely more options available for overseas contracts, there is infinitely greater competition. That's abundantly clear because only around 220-250 Australian players are competing overseas in other football leagues, and that was before COVID! There are near 800 contracts available in the AFL, at an average wage of around $400,000. That's very impressive for a so-called backwater competition. I agree: one of the big plusses football has is national representation, but it's constrained to the elite few. That, and it's a great game to play.

"I don't like using as a comparison a country several times bigger than Australia, I choose to use a country several times smaller than Australia"

stu, GB consists of England, Scotland, Wales and Nthn Ireland. Each is a separate country with their own parliament. It’s an odd one for us to grasp, what gets me is that they all have seats in England’s parliament which doubles as the British parliament. The North Irelanders recently held the balance of power in GB (may still, not sure). They all vote in England’s parliament, but England can’t vote in theirs. It’s very strange.

Yes the typical AFL response of "hey if its good enough for the NFL///" The USA has 350 million people. End of comparison. I'd rather use the comparison with Gaelic football. Small country, plays a boutique sport that is only popular in parts of the country.

thanks Munro Mike. I haven’t researched this until now, and then only a few hours in newspapers. There are a few books written on football history which I haven’t read so I can’t comment on them, but there are a lot of agendas being pushed in Australian history, not just in football history. It’s often hard to find the truth, news reports help but they too, are largely agenda driven. My bag is military history where in so far as sports go, soccer played an important role, but just about every book on war sport ignores it, completely. As for the Sydney centric bit, historically and contemporarily, yes. By the way, Victoria had a football association in 1945 that played what the press referred to as Association football. It’s rarely a clear cut case as we too often like to think.

BTW, enjoying this discussion with you today.

I do not disagree with your comments in regards to the AFL paying. it is very strong overall in comparison to Australian football players. AFL is by far the biggest competition in this country & yes generally their players are better payed then all the other sports, though NRL are pushing them. This you get no argument from me, no doubt AFL gives more players opportunity to earn a good $$ then the other sports in this country I was not though cherry picking, I was talking about the elite, as we were also discussing playing for Australia. So I was discussing the 30-40 players who are/have represented Australia in the last 5 years say. Lots of these players like Rogic, Mooy, Leckie, Ryan, Hurstic, earn more or equal then the elite in AFL, others players playing in Korea, Japan & middle East, Mitchell Duke probably just below the AFL elite level, while others would be in the range of the good AFL players. So I'm only looking at 30-40 players, who also play in meaningful competition & also gets to play for Australia in Olympics & WC. Now there are also those in the lower range in the A-League, that are playing in meaningful competitions, earning maybe 120k-150K a year, who are not working at Maccas, not earning your average AFL player, but can represent their country & play in the Olympics, play overseas. Now see the difference. So football not a bad option