Is the AFL really having an impact above the Barassi line?

Each Sunday, I pass a tiny primary school oval in Albion when I drive to visit my mum.

During summer, there’s always a scratch game of cricket going on, played by Indian immigrants, and in winter, a scratch game of footy, played by Vietnamese kids.

It so gladdens my heart to see these Vietnamese teenagers integrating in this way, that in that moment, I feel an urge to detour to Sunshine plaza, pick up a brand new Sherrin, swing back and holler, ‘Hey fellas … [torp the Sherrin deep into the oval] … enjoy!’

I told my mate Mick about this and he quipped, ‘Do that Zit, and the school will be swarming with police sirens.’

Mick, of course, was musing that the Sherrin gesture might be misconstrued as a little too ‘boiled lollies for kiddies’ and though that’s preposterous, you just can’t be too sure about people’s perceptions nowadays, so I’ve since shelved the idea.

Good-humored as he was in that case and usually is, Mick is not so whenever I applaud the AFL’s expansion teams in the northern states.

“That’s f@#*^g bullshit,” he’ll bark when I entertain that GWS are doing missionary work for the code.

It’s a response that not only doesn’t invite a counterargument, it signals that if there *is* a counterargument, the friendship will be ended, embassy’s closed and high grade retribution will be meted out on my ass.

Fortunately, I have the good sense to back off from a combustible situation when I encounter one and for the sake of the friendship, our embassy’s and the preservation of my ass, any kernels of a rebuttal I may have are summarily shelved alongside that nurturing Sherrin for the Vietnamese kids.

Mick’s outrage over my missionary work notion, industrious as it’s been, is not the only factor keeping my shelves well stocked, too: my old work colleague, Craig, has me mothballing rebuttals as well.

Craig is a Fitzroy supporter and having lost his club in the ’97 merger, has a raw nerve about any positive spin on the AFL’s zeal to expand.

Mercifully, most of my mates, and the other people in my circles, are a little less intolerant of my take. Sure they’re insistent that GWS are much less about the good of the code and way more about Andrew Demetriou and co greedily meeting bonus targets, but at least I don’t feel myself ducking for cover the way I do with Mick and Craig.

When I’m not feeling I’m in mortal danger, I’ll argue that just about every sport with a prime time ratings win under its belt is coveting the AFL’s heartland so it has no alternative but to push back.

“This is nature”, I’ll go on to say. “Just like animals and plants, sport’s will always look to expand their range. For the AFL not to would be to defy nature. Indeed, failing to do so would be at its own peril.”

I’ll feel real pleased with myself after this, thinking I’d just crushed their opposition to GWS with a hammer blow to the solar plexus. More often than not, I’ll even bask in my moment, thinking, *I’m getting more and more Yoda like every day; sh#t, is there no limit to my powers of wisdom?* But every so often, every once in a while, someone will push back and say, “That’s f@#*^g bullshit.”

Of course, it is f@#*^g bullshit. At least the ‘at its own peril’ thing is. Aussie Rules is in no danger of withering on the vine should it fail to grow.

The suits at AFL house could have never looked to expand up north and it’d still be every bit the biggest game in town. Even a deranged degree of insularity wouldn’t change that.

I only came to this realization recently. It wasn’t an epiphany or anything. At least it didn’t seem like an epiphany? They’re supposed to feel like an awakening. This felt more like seeing through a con.

That tiresome argument. ‘We’ll lose the best athletes to other sports if we fail to grow’ started to ring hollow. I mean, would the likes of Dusty Martin *really* have been lost to league if we didn’t have the extra TV rights dollars generated by the Queensland and NSW teams?

“Not bloody likely!” I can hear Jerry Seinfeld quote in the worst cockney accent you’ll come across.

For one thing, most of that money gets pumped back into the northern states to prop up their fledgling teams, so it hardly swells the overall salary caps.

But even if I’m wrong and there’s a good chunk left over to pay glamour players, say, 20 to 30% more than they would have got if we didn’t have GWS and The Suns, was that the reason a Dusty or Buddy stuck with Aussie Rules?

I mean, if it’s *really* all about money, wouldn’t we be haemorrhaging all of our best athletes to the riches of European soccer or to the mega-paying sports in the U.S? (or in the case of Mark ‘Jacko’ Jackson, the WWF?!)

Dusty might have been off to the Melbourne Storm if it wasn’t for the AFL adding the Suns. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Even though it didn’t make a lick of difference to the *real* health of the AFL’s heartland (i.e the amount of kids growing up with Footy, sticking with it because of love, not money), I’m happy to concede, however, that establishing teams in Sydney and Brisbane always had merit.

There were clearly enough Aussie Rules loving ‘expats’ in these Rugby league towns to make that viable. And so it has proved.

The Swans and Lions have both carved out a niche at their respective new homes and for the foreseeable future, look like they will keep afloat.

Indeed, it’s even fair to say that they have prospered and that their fan base is now made up of converts as well. But what has all this growth translated to? Well, it’s a mixed bag.

Of the many great players yielded from the northern states since South went to Sydney (excluding players from the Riverina, Broken Hill and ACT, as these regions were already part of the heartland), most cannot be attributed to a conversion.

Superstars, Michael Voss, Jason Akemanis and Nick Reiwoldt were already into-footy before their families moved to Queensland (just before their teens.) Emerging champion, Charlie Cameron dabbled a little bit with AFL while growing up in Brisbane, but only focused on it after his family moved to Perth (at age 16.)

Melbourne-born rising stars Harris Andrews and Eric Hipwood both grew up as ‘Banana-benders’, but their footy loving families were never gonna stand for them playing League (Hipwood’s Saints crazy parents even got married in the Moorabbin grandstand!)

And then there’s the exceptional players born in the growth states whose parents are from Melbourne.

It’s a long list! Lenny Hayes’s dad took him to Swans games, Mark and Jarrad McVeigh’s dad played 45 games in the VFA, Mal Michael’s dad played for Ormond, Dayne Zorko’s Slovenian born dad first settled in Melbourne, Jarrod Harbrow’s dad is from Shepparton (and Jarrod moved back there when 16) and Dayne Beams and Marcus Ashcroft, though often celebrated as Queenslanders, are actually Victorians (their families moved north before they’d reached a school age.)

And what of the lesser lights?

Callum Mills’s granddad played in the WAFL, Lewis Roberts-Thomson’s dad for Sandringham and David Armitage’s AFL ‘lovin father steered him nurturingly (sic) towards a Sherrin.

Need more examples to satisfy you there’s a trend? Okay: David Hales was born in Tassie and Ben Hudson in Fitzroy, while Brad Miller’s dad played for South, Tom Green’s granddad is a Richmond great and Brisbane raised Ben Keays is so ‘kicks, marks and handballs’, he has three generations of VFL footballers in his DNA (and I could go on and on, but haven’t I already?)

Of the players that count as converts (and thus, the true yield of the missionary work), the standouts are Kieran Jack and Isaac Heeney.

Jack’s conversion is the AFL’s greatest coup, of course. Proselytizing the son of a Rugby League great was like pulling off an ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ heist, and I dare say, would have had the suits at AFL house rejoicing the way the Vatican would if they’d ordained a descendant of the Ayatollah Khomeini!

Isaac Heeney was equally a triumph for Aussie rules. He is the first player recruited from the Hunter region and his bleached-blonde-surfie looks were the perfect poster boy advertisement for footy in bleached-blonde-friendly Sydney.

(Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

Marquee types Kurt Tippett and Charlie Dixon are also converts, though, the truth is, basketball was their first love and they only tried their luck with AFL late in their teens. Other notable players include Greg Stafford, Mark ‘The Fridge’ Roberts and Mitch Hahn.

I understand they all found Aussie Rules without any pressure from their parents. And then there’s the best of the current crop: Dane Rampe, Aliir Aliir, Jarrad Witts, Tom Hickey, Jack Bowes and Errol Gulden.

Again, I understand they didn’t have parents who dragged them kicking and screaming to the SCG or Gabba, when they’d have rather have been hanging out with their mates at Panthers stadium or Lang Park.

So, yeah, it’s a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s a big victory to have recruited so many players from the ‘heathen’ states, but on the other hand, the Victorian lineage of most tempers the notion of vigorous growth.

Indeed, based on these results, it’s fair to say that the best thing footy has got going for it up north is not its bewitching appeal, it’s the many Victorians who’ve relocated up there to escape Melbourne’s s**thouse weather!

Soberingly, Aussie rules isn’t expanding as rapidly as it likes to make out. It’s more a case that the establishment of teams in regions with a sizable Victorian diaspora has helped to keep their interest in footy on life support, and therefore, bump up the growth numbers where they settled artificially.

But still there’s growth. And when you consider how poorly the NRL has fared on this matter, it’s super impressive.

For all of Melbourne Storm’s incredible, incredible success, it has resulted in only 700 registered players currently in Victoria. Worse, only 200 of those 700 are juniors. That’s right, only 200 kids play organised rugby league in Victoria.

Mahe Fonua is one of the few true Melbourne Storm juniors (Photo by Paul Keevil/Action Plus via Getty Images)

That is the true return on League’s 20+ year investment in Victoria: exciting 200 kids to cauliflower a schoolmates ears!

Moreover, you would expect that a great many of those kids aren’t playing league because they’ve been inspired by Storm’s incredible achievements, but because they’ve been pressured to do so by their league loving ex-Sydneysider/Queenslander/Pacific Islander parents.

Undoubtedly that would be factor, so it’s even *less* than 200. In the meantime, the AFL has absolutely mopped the floor with the NRL on participation. If you believe the AFL’s marketing dept, hundreds of thousands play footy in the northern states, but more reliable sources have it around 50,000 in Queensland (men and women) and in the tens of thousands in NSW.

It’s an impressive set of metrics no matter who you believe, but again, it would be tempered by the ex-Victorian component in the numbers, you’d feel.

The Storm’s abysmal failure to gain traction with kids in its hometown has an even more damning granular detail, too: of the six Victorian born players who have gone on to play in the NRL, only one player came through Melbourne’s junior comps.

The other five left Victoria at a young age (and I understand only one of them played in a junior comp before leaving) so, yeah, that’s it: one born and bred Victorian. One!

And when you temper that metric the way I have when evaluating Aussie rules true growth, it’s zip, because it hardly counts as a conversion when the players parents emigrated to Victoria from League loving Tonga.

Melbourne Storm academy product Gareth Widdop. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

League’s Victorian junior comps have actually done a little better than developing one player for the NRL. A handful of players who settled in Victoria with their families at a young age have progressed through the feeder systems.

Some had already played junior league in the places they were born and some had not, but there aren’t any celebrated instances of a family moving to Victoria specifically because of a love of Aussie rules, only to be disappointed by one of their kids, who spurned their parents hopes, and said, “Screw Gary Ablett, I wanna play League!”

The Storm and its partners trumpet that they spent 23 million promoting and developing the game in Victoria between 2005 and 2012 (and heaven knows how much more since then), while the AFL has pumped hundreds of millions into doing the same in the east side of the ‘Barrasi Line’ you’d venture, and what has been the return on their investments?

A small and underwhelming crop of converts for the AFL and nothing, nada, zilch for league. But, of course, that’s just being cynical, because conversions are just one aspect of growth. The Suns, Giants and Storm have created hundreds of jobs for players, coaches and support staff.

That’s growth too. As is maintaining the interest of fans who have moved to a state where their code previously didn’t have a presence. If not for the Brisbane Bears, Michael Voss and Nick Reiwoldt may very well have been lost to another sport, so it’s reasonable to factor the retention of interest as a component of growth as well.

As it also is when considering the development of the McVeigh brothers and their like. If not for being able to take their Sydney born and bred kids to watch the Swans, ex-Melbournian dads might struggle to foster their interest in AFL, so having a presence in that case translates to the retention of intergenerational growth, does it not?

The AFL crows that participation, memberships and TV ratings are all going through the roof in Queensland and New South Wales, so maybe it is premature to dismiss footy’s capacity to win over rusted-on fans of other sports. Maybe it takes 50 years to do so? Maybe it takes a 100?

The world’s slowest growing tree is Canada’s ‘White Cedar’, which grows 4 inches every 155 years, and perhaps the AFL’s expansion lines up with the rings of that tree’s trunk?

Who knows? But maybe it will never happen? Maybe footy will always remain a niche sport in Australia’s north-east, having a presence for the sole purpose of servicing ex-Victorians? I feel all the indicators point to the latter outcome.

I’ll continue to applaud GWS. Part of their *raison d’etre* is to stem the lost ground in Canberra to the Brumbies and Raiders, and that’s worthy of my approval.

Nick Daicos of Collingwood competes for the ball with GWS’ Lachie Whitfield. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

But I won’t make the mistake again of applauding them for the notion that they are doing missionary work. For one, that would be misspent energy, because I’m certain they will fail. But it’s more the case that I have now have mixed feelings about wanting them to succeed.

While I want the traditional support for Footy stabilized in the ACT, I don’t want to encroach into league’s territory. ‘The Golden Rule’ has suddenly sprung to mind for me on this matter.

I mean, if it would horrify me to walk into ‘Young and Jackson’ on a Friday night and see everyone huddled around the screens watching the Storm (and it would!), then shouldn’t I have empathy for a League-loving Sydneysider experiencing the same horror if the Giants dominated all the pub screens in Penrith?

Like, I don’t want my sports culture eroded, so shouldn’t I do to others what I would have them do to me?

But as troubled as I now am philosophically about footy and league’s turf war, I’m way more concerned about the damage it’s doing back home.

When I’d drunk the AFL’s Kool-Aid, I believed that striving to win over Western Sydney would make footy stronger. But I’ve since observed that it has made it weaker.

My mates, the people in my circles, the vast majority of callers I come across on talkback radio, resent GWS. They complain that the AFL hyperextends itself in favoring them and it’s hard to argue otherwise when you have Gil McLachlan stating publicly that he hopes Stephen Coniglio stays a Giant.

As a one-time supporter of expansion, I reconciled myself with these perceptions of inequality because of my ‘code over club’ position. But I now ask myself, “Is it good for the code if you piss off the majority of fans in the heartland to service a few expats and a trickle of new converts?”

The answer to that, of course, is that it isn’t. Indeed, the disillusionment it causes makes it downright detrimental.

Mick, Craig and my other mates won’t be suffering my naiveté any longer. They won’t hear, “Sacrifices have to be made for the good of the code.”

They won’t be stupefied by, “The next Gary Ablett could come from Penrith.” They won’t ever again have to laugh off, “Toby is misunderstood.”

But if GWS’s presence in the ACT rescues the interest in footy of the next Alex Jesaulenko, well, I’ll be privately jubilant.

Hell, it might even inspire me to torp a hastily purchased Sherrin deep into that school oval in Albion. Even if I do risk coming off a little bit like Mr Stinky.