TBH it wouldn't totally surprise me if the VIC AFL clubs seriously consider defecting to real football within the next 30 years...

At day's end, love or hate their code you can't deny they do have considerable potential as individual club entities, colossally greater than that of their code itself.

=d> :lol: :lol: :lol: Don't normally agree with much you say, but that was a gem, get in there son :lol: Hope you don't mind if I use that one? hahaha love it

If Man U can play 25 friendlies in Australia per year, soccer might have chance of getting things onto an even keel.

You think? I think we're doing just fine thanks.

point is there is obviously a huge market for football in this country(not not soccer)

May I direct you to this observation of mine:

"TBH it wouldn't totally surprise me if the VIC AFL clubs seriously consider defecting to real football within the next 30 years...

At day's end, love or hate their code you can't deny they do have considerable potential as individual club entities, colossally greater than that of their code itself."

Face it boyo, the only thing of substance your code has to stand on is the history/tradition of its main clubs - take that away and you've practically nothing.

Edited by BA81: 15/1/2013 09:48:51 PM

#-o #-o
The logic is that Australia is becoming more & more globalized, and even our PM is talking about how we have to embrace Asia.
Simple maths will tell you that 22 million is nowhere near enough to affect sport structure & the money therin of Asia. If the product is an unheard of game. ( you can now go on your rant about how the game is conquering China and how Japan has a team that comes down here to kick around on a real oval ) you guys have a snowball's chance in hell.

But as you've got a captive, saturated market you're quite correct, who needs an overseas market?
It doesn't matter 1 iota to me if you and the AFL admin want to bury your head in the sand. Be my guest.
( you will also notice that I couldn't give a rat's about what a tinpot, parochial newspaper has to say )



Edited by redcup: 15/1/2013 10:49:54 PM

I think this part of the problem, the AFL may be Billion dollar a year business, but who cares? The little old A-League has got The Bakrie Group, Frank Lowy and David Trakovento who could all buy the AFL if they wanted to do so. And just last season we took a licence off another billionaire.

The problem with the AFL is it is small time....

Edited by Joffa: 15/1/2013 11:37:24 PM

Lol.

:lol: Here's a little nugget. You've got people jumping from League > AFL > Union, and FOOTBALL is the one called simple etc.? Crazy talk. But you heard it here first people, YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE!

To me, Football is far simpler than both AFL, League and Union.


But that's me anyway...

Simpler to understand how the game works, or how to win/play it? The best thing about football is you can take whatever level of complexity you want - if you want to just muck around trying to get nutmeggs or score 20m screamers, you can. If you want a very physical battle royale, you can. If you want a precision one-touch passing game that is also fine. If you want to delve into tactics and formations, defensive structures, positional and gameflow awareness and set-piece competency that is there too. The combinations are endless - show me antyhing similar or even close in the world today and I will move to Rwanda and farm monkeys.

the great thing about football is there are so many different football cultures around the world, different ways to play and different philosophies, some cultures play with more flare others play with more physicality, no other sport in the world has so many cultures playing it

i would say afl is more complex especially because if your an afl player you need to constantly get drunk and start fights and abuse others and constantly be getting into trouble there isnt that pressure in football

Edited by swarth: 16/1/2013 01:38:35 AM

What an embarrassing thread! If this was reversed and posted by bitter idiots on bigfooty or League Unlimited you'd all be laughing at the crap posted by "uneducated bogans" and shouting "smell the fear!". For a sport no one supposedly cares about, 442 sure can't stop talking about it in every second thread #-o .

In any case Rugby League is king in Sydney and always will be. Aussie Rules and Soccer are only fighting for niche markets. The so-called "footy war" in Western Sydney is just a media beat-up mostly by News Ltd who love creating, feeding and living off divisive issues usually of their own making. They've got to attract paid net subscribers who will rant in comment sections of stories somehow :roll:.


The FA Cup final isn't moved away from Wembley when most of the time two non-London teams are playing.

Anyway the problem with moving the AFL Grand Final isn't whinging Vics (Herald-Sun journos and Neil Mitchell aside). The issue is MCC and AFL members and Grand Final guaranteed tickets that come with these memberships. Money talks and no MCG Grand Final means less money for the MCC. People aren't going to bother joining a 20-year MCC waiting list if there's no Grand Final tickets. It was the MCC's influence within the State Government that stopped Waverley Park becoming a 150,000 capacity stadium. No that's not a misprint. The original plans were for the members grandstand (shown in Howzat - Packer's War, for non-AFL fans) to be eventually extended right around the ground and the Grand Final moved there post-1982. It was blocked and the Grand Final has remained at the MCG and will so until 2035 at least.

Having said all that, it would be a smart move by the AFL to move a Swans vs Giants Grand Final to ANZ as it has the 80k capacity to host a Grand Final (and yes it was hard to type GWS being in a GF with a serious face). Just as it would be smart for the FFA to play a Wanderers vs Sydney FC Grand Final at ANZ. Administrators of any football code in Australia need to think big and maximise numbers to promote their sport.


Ask England. The Poms know what it's like to constantly lose in sports they invented :lol:.


That has to be seriously the dumbest and most moronic comment I have ever read.

So called fans of one code have for over 100 years been predicting the demise of other codes. It's never happened despite all codes going through trouble times at one point or another. I remember as a kid in the 1970s being told by one adult that Soccer would be the only football code in Australia by the year 2000 and by another that Soccer would hardly exist here as the kids and grandkids of post-war European migrants became "Australianised" and switched to "footy". It was all laughable and ignorant BS! These one-eyed code supporters (every football code has them) can't accept that the sport they think is the greatest thing since sliced bread is considered by others out there as being boring as bat poo! Welcome to the diversity of the human race.

Edited by Jeff W: 16/1/2013 03:04:50 AM

Edited by Jeff W: 16/1/2013 03:06:54 AM

Football can be simple or complex. It can also appear simple while being complex.


I'm certain many AFL fans would say the same about their sport but I personally see 90% scrambling in a pack along the ground for the ball and 10% of something that resembles a thought-out game.

But that's just me. Carry on.

And why was the licence removed? Because he was a nutcase who treated the club as his own personal plaything while locking his own club's fans out. He couldn't run a club to save himself nor connect with the local community #-o so the club was killed off as it had become an embarrassment to the league. Hardly an example to boast about.

AFL clubs are members-based so it's a moot point anyway. Private ownership has continually failed in Australian sport. The Pratt family and Carlton go hand in hand but they don't and can't own the club even though they could buy it 100 times over as well as the AFL.

Who cares? Virtually most major corporations that have or want a presence across Australia. Cultural cringe doesn't work anymore. Australia is now the 12th largest economy in the world and not a financial basketcase unlike many European countries are now. There's first-world consumers and money to be made here.

Exactly it's in the eye of the beholder.

Soccer is simple at a beginners/junior level but as you progress up through the age ranks it becomes one of the most highly skilled and technical sports (at least by foot). If you don't have elite footskills you've got no chance of playing at a professional level. That's why technical training at a young age is so important and why we need to do more of it in Australia. Furthermore in the modern game as the game speed increases you need elite running power to close down space defensively and to run and create space offensively.

Aussies Rules shares the later as well as some tactical structures in modern times but even at AFL level there are still dud kickers. On the other hand, AFL would have a superior all-round athleticism as the overall skill-set is different being able to use your hands to mark the ball and it's more physical with full body tackling. Rugby League is probably the simplest of the lot. Grab ball and run forward until you break a line, dish off by hand or get tackled (repeat 5 times). Unbelievable acceleration and power and the ability to take front on hits at full throttle. Tactically its the code that has changed the least since I was a kid although there's more a kicking game these days. Union is too dependent on penalties and field goals these days which is frustrating. The flowing rugby of the 90s was best. NFL is the most complicated of the lot - human chess. Like most American sports too many timeouts. I prefer sports that are continuously in play.

Eye of the beholder as you say. To me AFL is messy, yes they do require the better athletes, but to me it's a sport that rewards mediocre point for a miss, dropping the ball means play on, no offsides. The highlight reels can be spectacular with some of the brilliant marks, but watching a whole game, rather give birth to a chair.

You really need to have grown up with it, otherwise its a very ugly game. This is why it will never take off overseas.

You wonder if it was a world game like football would it be different? if AFL had a billion people that played the game around the world only 5 or 6 of the players in the current AFL would be good enough to play in the worlds top league, what would this league look like?

I welcome the input of some new contributors, and the diversity of opinion that has brought.

Hopefully, the personal abuse and extreme antagonism demonstrated by some posters will become a thing of the past.

The Mark Viduka entry on Wikipedia mentions that as well. Why? It is not relevant or important and there is no mention of passing interests of other sport stars. There is no mention of what HAL/ EPL team each VFL player supports.

It is there because some VFL zealot (like Mr Football) altered the entry because a real sports star once mentioned an interest in their sport. That presented an opportunity for the zealot to present its little game to the 99.999999% of the world who are lucky enough to have never heard of the VFL.

No, wasn't me, and I agree it's of marginal importance.

To answer the original question, yes, in Australian terms (and even in the Southern Hemisphere), Collingwood is very big - bigger than the 10 A-League clubs combined - on almost every measure.

Edited by Mister Football: 16/1/2013 09:56:34 AM

We share one thing in common. We all hate the Ref's :roll:

Don't forget our common humanity as well! :)

Talking about 'extreme antagonism' on a football site.

Do you seriously believe that Collingwood are even known about outside of Australia? That they are a 'bigger club' than River Plate or Indepeniente or Palmeiras?
Like COYS said, I live in NSW and the only thing I know about Collingwood is Eddy McGuire.
They are a big fish in a small pond.

very small pond, AFL is a pretty dirty word up this way

I think the primary reason for most of us to ark up about this subject is that it has history.

http://liberodas.blogspot.com.au/p/soccerphobia-australia.html
And this is by no means complete. But a nice spread of the sort of history the game has to put up with in mainstream media. And this doesn't cover tv and radio.

Of course the Simon Hill retort to a recent article is just the latest of these.

http://www.fiveaa.com.au/audio_simon-hill-fights-with-cornesy-about-del-piero_106111

As Simon says, it is now coming to the point that we have had enough. We may seem reactionary but it comes from having to put up with a systemic attitude of denigration and self-servitude by the media based on power and manipulation.

Of course trolls like Mister Football come here to stir the pot, and many posters here have had discourse with him giving contrary views and alternate views but he has no intention of changing his mind, that's why he like it when new posters join in, he can annoy new people as old ones give up. I don't expect him to stop liking his game but his coming here is to create aggravation – and he's the only one. He's kept this thread alive all by himself and the fact many of us refuse to be told the game is not worthy (as Simon Hill explained).

In response to Wembley, England is another matter all together. However you want to look at it, London is the capital, there is a sense of "occasion" by playing in London at Wembley. The country is physically small, making it achievable by bus, train, plane or car in a matter of a few hours from the most distant places and it is the biggest stadium.

None of those conditions are met by the MCG. I personally couldn't give two tosses for AFL or it's problems but it was basically in response to the expansion debate directed essentially to Mister Football.

As Mister Football has shown to completely ignore points raised by me and others that he finds too difficult, he will persist with things that he knows will get responses. So my opinion is that people ignore him.

Edited by RobB: 16/1/2013 10:50:34 AM

I saw a Fremantle Docker sticker on a wall in a random highway underpass in central Italy :lol: Clearly the Dockers are the biggest AFL club in Oz ;)

Whereas teams like Sydney FC, Newcastle Jets and WSW are known in Europe and Asia ;)
(on this season alone, not to mention from previous seasons based off ACL and marquees etc)