Nationhood is an illusionary concept. Nation-states, rather than being made up of homogenous populations, are divided internally by varying social groups, whose fault lines run along ethnic, gender, class, regional, and other identification barriers.
Adherence to nationhood relies on artificial symbols – flags, anthems, constitutions, and borders – to bind their people together into what political scientist and historian Benedict Anderson has labelled ‘imagined communities.’
The shared euphoria of the Matildas’ World Cup odyssey has been one of the most effective vehicles of creating a truly universal bonding experience in Australian history. In a time when our society is increasingly fragmented, the Matildas are giving Australians something to cherish together.
Saturday night’s victory over France even appeared to begin the process of healing one of the deepest and bitterest divisions in our national existence: the Code Wars. Vision of Carlton and Melbourne AFL fans losing their collective minds at Cortnee Vine’s ice-cold penalty sealer supports the unthinkable notion that Australians can support more than one football code at a time. Spooky.
That the AFL executive also agreed to broadcast the Matildas quarter-final match at its venues across the country has raised expectations that the long-standing sporting feud has finally begun to thaw. ‘Hopefully,’ remarked Melbourne football journalist Rohan Connolly, ‘it’s a gesture signalling a desire to help end the infantile “Code Wars”.’
Sam Kerr. (Photo by Andy Cheung/Getty Images)
Connolly, however, needs to be careful where his hopes take him, lest he become a modern-day Neville Chamberlain, who declared he had achieved ‘Peace for our time’ less than 12 months before war with Hitler’s Germany erupted.
Australian rules and football’s unity under the banner of a Matildas inspired patriotism, sadly, is not all that it appears. SEN’s Sam Edmunds reported that negotiations between AFL and FIFA executives to broadcast the Matildas match at the formers venues was laced with overt hostility on both sides.
Having received a contract from FIFA stipulating the Matildas game must be shown in full, with an additional 10-minutes of the post-match program added for good measure, the AFL responded that the feed would cease immediately upon its teams entering their respective arenas, whether the Matildas game was finished or not. FIFA’s abbreviated response was stern: ‘OK, if you’re turning it off the big screen well then you are turning it off everything’.
Though FIFA’s aggressive negotiating tactics may appear undignified at first, it must be remembered that the AFL has been far from a friendly neighbour to the world game down under. Earlier this year, the AFL decided to release its 2023 fixture on the same morning of the Socceroos World Cup knockout match against Argentina.
Football Australia, meanwhile, has not forgotten the AFL’s blunt refusal 14 years ago to lend it Docklands Stadium to support its bid to host the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cups. A deal to screen the Matildas game at AFL venues was eventually struck, but one that Edmunds described as something closer to an ‘arranged marriage’ rather than a happy union.
These recent skirmishes are merely the latest phase of an ongoing conflict reminiscent of George Orwell’s three-way ‘perpetual war’. Tensions between each sport – football, Australian rules, and the third combatant, rugby – which date back to the 19th century, were driven by a range of geographical and political factors.
In 1881, a Melbourne local bemoaned the indigenous games rejection up north simply because of petty inter-colonial rivalries: ‘The great objection to the rules in NSW was the fact that they were styled ‘The Victorian Rules of Football’. Had they been dubbed the Scandinavian rules, well and good; but Victorian – perish the thought!’
Australian rules and rugby’s conflict remains fierce, but comfortable. Both have fixed positions on either side of the Barassi line, and while there are occasional manoeuvres into each other’s territories, neither threatens to totally dislodge one another entirely. “The AFL is doing a great job (in Queensland), no doubt, and I take my hat off to them, but competition lifts all ships, and their competition has lifted us,” said Australian Rugby League Commission chair Peter V’landys earlier this year.
Football presents a different kind of enemy. Like fifth columnists, the game is both everywhere and nowhere in Australia. Superior international competitions siphon off the best local talent, while administrators continue to shoot themselves in the foot with their poor handling of the A-League.
But football’s enemies lay in a state of constant anxiety for the day when it finally gets its act together and brings the world game, with all its might, down upon this lonely island nation. George Megalogenis believes the Matildas stunning victory against France, which garnered a whopping 4.9 million television viewers nationally, may prove a turning point: “The AFL and NRL, the two sides of Australia’s footballing duopoly, have been dreading the moment when soccer holds the nation’s attention. Now that moment is here…”
The Matilda’s (many of whom are fans of AFL and/or rugby league) and the Australian public have shown that our sporting allegiances need not be monogamous. But as long as professional sport continues to be run on a strictly capitalist model, where executives search greedily for every dollar to impress boards and thereby bolster their own yearly bonuses, the Code Wars will rage on unabated.
There are no heroes in this shootout, only the quick and the dead.
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
AF and RL will always have supremacy over ⚽ as they are more entwined in the history of the culture. Attendance, media, money, etc are all behind those two. ------- I know :football: has it in participation numbers but the better money in Australia is in the codes of the 2 oblate spheroid balls. I've enjoyed all three & RU games. :football: in A League games is good but it's no European League and that's where it will always suffer. AF & RL don't suffer from the fanbase being attracted elsewhere.
Sport all rounder
Roar Rookie
You've got Trump covered Chris with your vitriolic hate. You must hold the record for the mount of times you mention NRL or AFL on any forum on Roar. Calm down, its sport not war. :rugby: :cricket: :cricket: :tennis:
chris1
Roar Rookie
Well no - I'm talking about people paying to watch football. And your argument falls apart as soon as someone asks you "hey apart from the Swans - what other team are they watching?" Or..."what is the TOTAL number of people watching professional AFL in NSW"?
AR
Roar Rookie
To suit your argument, we should probably also include indoor soccer attendances, kindergarteners, seniors, park football and fussballers. Better?
Lazza
Roar Rookie
We have the 'online generation' now. What do these kids see when they go online? Everyone is chatting about the EPL and the NBA and discussing the merits of the world's best Football and Basketball players. No one is interested in AFL or the NRL. Think they don't notice?
high horse
Roar Rookie
The new reality tomorrow is that tomorrow you will wake up to a bandwagon that has fallen over and the Matilda’s will be forgotten and normality will return I hope you enjoyed your few weeks in the sun
The tagger
Roar Rookie
Hey AR I think your comment about infighting between the various Australian rules state leagues is spot on. While they united under the banenr of the Australian National Football Council throughout the 20th century the competition over player retention was fierce, and caused a lot of bad blood. As did the competition between the VFL and VFA. It is all very interesting stuff if you enjoy the off-field side of sport, which I do.
chris1
Roar Rookie
I'm not comparing anything. 12k watching AFL on a Saturday night is horrendous. You can dance around it as much as you like and point fingers at A League this and sokkah that. But 12k (which is the normal ratings number in Sydney and Brisbane) is woeful. No amount of "whataboutism" is going to change that.
chris1
Roar Rookie
Did you include the NPL1 numbers like I quoted? No you didn't.
Adam
Roar Guru
Oh I remember Nemesis...I wasn't allowed to be a football bandwagoner. Either had to bleed for the sport or jog on :laughing:
Grem
Roar Rookie
Thanks for that. The fact is we football/sport supporters know how successful the AFL is domestically. Like Graham Arnold (coach of Socceroos) said - “We don’t want to take money from other codes, we just want a fair share”. Football does need more investment to match their participation and to continue to have successful national teams in a genuine world game into the future.
AR
Roar Rookie
"More people attend Sydney FC, Wanderers, Bulls and all the NPL1 clubs than the Swans and GWS." In 2023, the combined average attendance for SFC, WSW and MAC was 33k. In 2023, the combined average attendance for Swans and GWS is 42k. This is a silly debate, but if you're gonna run it, start with the facts.
AR
Roar Rookie
Australian Football (the VFL/SANFL/WAFL/AFL) probably had the fiercest infighting of any of the other football codes for decades. It was sending the game broke. The introduction of the AFL in the late 80s rescued the game from devouring itself. The other codes (most notably league) continued infighting for the next 20 years. The notion that soccer or rugby or league or tennis or any other sport somehow have a different worldview to the AFL, is a fiction. All sports want to do as well as they possibly can. Today, the biggest difference between the AFL and every other sporting code is due to the AFL getting its act together earlier than the others, and becoming more organised, more centralised (this is key), better run, and better financed than all the others.
moe_syzlak
Roar Rookie
well ..... good luck with all that ...... and all the best for tomorrow night
AR
Roar Rookie
When talking tv ratings for domestic football competitions, it's surprising to read people like chris1 gloating about tv viewing numbers in Sydney. I suspect that the interest, in Sydney, in a Carlton v Melbourne game, is around the same as the interest, in Melbourne, for a WSW v Bulls game. That might be generous to ALeague tv ratings, but that's the comparison. If the gloat is to compare a regular AFL game with the Matildas' historic World Cup QF against France... wowee - you're giving the AFL a little too much credit.
AR
Roar Rookie
Quite true. When the winter football seasons stop, most sports fans turn to the racing carnival, cricket, tennis, golf, surfing, soccer... The radical idea pressed by a few on this tab is that there is one true sport that deserves to take up every waking minute of the calendar year. It's a weird perspective.
Grem
Roar Rookie
This may be foreign to you, but to focus on the international game you need to focus on the domestic game. To focus on the domestic game you need to focus on the grass roots game and with over a million participants football should receive the funding that it deserves. International players come from the domestic competition in any sport that competes at a world level.
Grem
Roar Rookie
3 goals towards the end. I was thinking it may go to extra time at 1-1.
Doctor Rotcod
Roar Rookie
Do you remember Nemesis? He/she is/was the very definition of an insular, insulting, ignorant football follower. If football followers have a beef, take it up with the market for eyes and bums. The old saying that goes " the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet, " springs to mind. Plenty of prejudice against Aussies wanting to be part of local football teams in WA in the fifties all the way through to the eighties. Australian Rules grew and grew, football did not.
moe_syzlak
Roar Rookie
what does your authority say about the geographic origin of $ spent on match day tickets/memberships/merchandise/food/bars/pubs/transport etc - $ spent by southerners or residents of nsw/qld?