Aussies don't think AFL is the greatest game in the world.  You might even struggle to win that poll in Melbourne.  No hope north of the Murray.

Wouldn't mind seeing your list of "world class sports" though.
I mean, are there any really other than football?

AFL metrics indicate it is slowly dying.
A couple of Brits wrote a book a few years back on the world wide mega success of football, and took a look at a few other sports.
When they came to aussie rules, they concluded it would simply get swamped by football, and it will only survive long term as a cultrual curiosity, perhaps funded by government to be played during cultural festivals.

I never said that, 

I said AFL people think it's the greatest game. yet, they're not even good at it, and it take up a chunk of athletes in 3 states.

I remember watching kids from hajduk train years ago, and just thinking - fark me look at their touch, 

Having said that having a physical style can also be good. As long as you are not just a lug and actually try and hold the ball and pass it around. 

Sadly, they do in the southern states - WA, SA , Vic and Tas.

It drives me nuts!

Many think if anyone can play AFL they are superior to Olympians, and every other international  sportsperson in every other sport. Very good for AFL to never be tested internationally - it  helps perpetuate the myth of how good they are!

Sorry.  Took a couple of reads before I understood that.

Meanwhile I grabbed the first drop from Googling world's most popular sports and:
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-most-popular-sports-in-the-world.html

Here is a similar list:

1.	Soccer / Association Football	3.5 Billion	Europe, Africa, Asia, America.
2.	Cricket	2.5 Billion	Asia, Australia, UK.
3.	Field Hockey	2 Billion	Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia.
4.	Tennis	1 Billion	Europe, Asia, America.
5.	Volleyball	900 Million	Europe, Australia, Asia, America.
6.	Table Tennis	850 Million	Europe, Africa, Asia, America.
7.	Baseball	500 Million	America, Japan.
8.	Golf	450 Million	Europe, Asia, America, Canada.
=9	Basketball	400 Million	America.
=9	American Football	400 Million	Europe, Africa, Asia, America, Australia.

Now please note that Australia doesn't appear in the the Association Football list but manages to make it to the American Football entry!
Few grains of salt required.
But note that Australia does well in most of those sports in International competition.  Baseball and our beloved American Football are letting us down.

Will never happen.

It's here to stay. I think I read 4th most attended sport in the world by weekly averages or maybe even higher.

AFL people love it. Can't see it going the way of the dodo ever.

It will be increasingly ignored as the world continues to get smaller.

When football finally gets its house in order (by which I mean the full unification of the game into a proper pyramid) it will finally start to make inexorable progress via the inspiration and encouragement of top athletes into the highest levels of the game - improving the professional product - and so further inspiring etc etc

That will be the death knell for AFL and to a lesser extent NRL. Rugby will survive.

It's already happened in a particular crime novel set in 2030 - Welcome to Ord City. Written by... erm... some guy.

It is interesting that of all the major English speaking countries that were colonised by the Brits before football was codified only one has football as its most popular sport.  There are lists around for each country and they are generally fairly similar except for Australia where the Ausplay stats are often used and the popularity of a professional sport is replaced with the number of participants.

In South Africa and Football tops Rugby Union and Cricket simply because of the overwhelming Black African population (76%).  Football player payments, however, do not anywhere near match that in Rugby Union.

In the USA American Football is by far the most popular sport with Football a long way back around 6th.  

In Canada Ice Hockey is king ahead of Canadian Football and basketball with Football 4th or 5th.  Interestingly limited over Cricket is growing quickly there.

In Australia Cricket is the most popular ahead of AFL and NRL with Football, Netball and Basketball vying for the lower placings.  The Ausplay stats are often used in preparation of the various lists and Football wins the day but in no way does the ALM come anywhere near the major professional sports for popularity here and it never will.

In New Zealand it is Rugby Union all the way from Cricket with the also rans like Netball ,Basketball and Football fighting for the scraps.

In all 5 of these countries Football has the highest participation but only in South Africa does that translate to support of the game locally.

It's because football is traditionally a working class sport which is why it's so big in the industrial era heartlands of the Midlands and Lancashire. 

Most of the immigrant movement to the Commonwealth in the 19th century came from middle and upper class people. They brought cricket and Rugby and wouldn't have played football. 

Not sure what they list suggests. 

That is not correct.  By the end of c19th, migrants, mainly from the UK and Ireland, numbered around 1 million.  As well as the 160k convicts the population had grown because since the 1830s the colonial governments had run schemes to entice workers for the farms, mines and industries that were springing up as the colonies expanded.  Some came as free settlers but most came as assisted migrants.  Of course the gold rushes in NSW then Vic added significantly to that number during the 1850sand 1860s..

When football arrived here circa 1880 the place was ripe for the game to take hold and it was the Brit populated coal mining regions in the Hunter and the Illawarra and the Scot populated industrial suburb of Granville that became the first heartlands of the sport.

The unfortunate thing for football is that AFL had been invented in Melbourne some 20 years earlier and took hold in Vic, SA, WA and Tas very quickly.  Rugby Union was the sport of the educated and also was well established in NSW and Qld before football arrived.  Unfortunately also the professional sport of Rugby League was established in Sydney in 1908 and that put the other amateur codes behind the 8 ball in that state.

 

Victorian Rules didn't catch on in Adelaide until 1877. Before that the main football clubs in Adelaide played a game called "Kensington Rules" which vaguely resembled Rugby. They had even considered adopting English FA Rules in 1873, but didn't go ahead with it. What a shame!

Not sure I can agree with that.

What annoys me is the Government support of the AFL and the use of it by Austrade. What possible relevance does Port Adelaide have to China?  

I remember a few years ago (I think Abbott was PM) he turned up with a Sherrin to promote trade with Japan, particularly beef. A few days later Maradonna turned up as a rep for Argentina. The football loving Japanese PM dropped his promise an expanded trade deal and instead did the deal with Argentina. Simply put Australia Rules Football is irrelevant to the majority of the world, as is Rugby League.

To pour millions in support of what is a multi-million dollar industry which can support itself and then use it as a trade 'gimmick' is ludicrous. They inflate their participation rates (particularly in the northern states) so their value to the health of the nation is also overstated and can;t be justified as a preventative health measure. 

OH well, the Argentine economy needs all the help it can get.

Um.  This is gonna be my last input dragging this off topic.

I have no idea what that list addresses.  There is nothing in the greater article that I can find that supports or even mentions a single fact that supports its conclusions.  Despite their world dominance in Ju Jitsu and pre-eminence in football, there would be few people that would subjectively or objectively choose Brasil as the number one successful or focused sporting nation in the world.

The list I grabbed was put up as an example in response to those that say that Australia only excels in sports that are supported by a minority of the world.  It is abundantly clear that Australia is and has been highly ranked in many or most of the world's most popular sports and the numbers are listed.

I have to place this one-upmanship and disparagement of our own, and others, in the bin along with "most liveable city" and "best passport" and other subjective paid-for trash.

Australians are into sport.  Fact.  Not all Australians are into all sports.  Many Australians hate sport.  It's kind of irrelevant determining the extent and comparing with other nations.  Attempting to put down people because they support other sports or any particular pursuit doesn't advance your own interests.

The AFL (and predecessors) have long focussed on putting down other sports and promoting their own accomplishments beyond truthful boundaries. They have often used mythical cultural mores as a tool in the endeavour.  Not our problem.
It hasn't won them a whole lot.

I don't see any reason for football fans to invoke similar prejudice against other sport in their own country (or beyond).  It's not a winning strategy.

As much as I agree in principle, 'being the bigger man' in this kind of situation rarely works either.

As I've said in the past, the game here needs to make its peace w/the fact it will never be the outright dominant sport in this country(particularly as far as the affections of 'skip' Aussies from the AFL states are concerned) and thus embrace the fact it will remain a majority-'ethnic' sport here until the end of time...which is absolutely *nothing* to be ashamed of and never was, despite the efforts of the whole old-sokkah/new-football dichotomy to convince us so.

We need to attract skips to the game, the old wogs are dying out.

But their descendants, as well as constant influxes of migration are there to pick up the slack.

As for the other point I was referring specifically to skips from the AFL states, as opposed to the NRL ones where historically ⚽'s had that much greater degree of acceptance from them by comparison.

Anglo-Celtic/culturally-white Aussies who've been born&bred in the AFL bubble are, generally speaking, a beyond-lost cause. Yes, you get the odd convert here-and-there but in the final analysis any concentrated effort to woo them to ⚽ is a terminal waste of time and resources. Alas, it is what it is😧

• People's Republic of China​
• India.
• ​United Kingdom.
• Philippines.
• Vietnam.
• United States of America.
• Nepal.
• Hong Kong (SAR of the PRC)

Top ten countries sending migrants to aus now. All except 1 utterly useless at football. 

UK aren't great, but they're not completely useless at football!

Just how many Countries play AFL again? Oh, that's right not many. The majority of sporting public prefer the sports no one cares about in the World. This is a closed, insular mindset that cannot be changed disappointingly. Salary Cap also stems from this way of thinking, administrators see it as the answer to Soccer or NRL's problems over the years. 
Much less resourced Countries can establish a decent structure for football (second and third tiers, youth program) but the Australian Cartels over the years, such as the current administration have not ever overseen a decent structure for football. Not seen as in they're best interests.

With 2 million participants nationwide, plus their families and all the volunteers, in-roads are definitely being made, including those states where skips dominate.

TBH w/only India and the US in that list as places where ⚽ is an outright-minority/fringe sport, how good the other countries actually are at international-level isn't necessarily the be-all&end-all as long as their migrants participate in the grassroots here. That said, fast-tracking Ukrainian visas here definitely wouldn't go  astray...

People complain about anything 
The Socceroos have qualified for the last 5 FIFA WCs
We have a National domestic competition in which all the major cities are represented by Professional teams

Exposure of more Youth is desperately needed. The tiers of football are disfunctional and they don't play at a higher level such as a NSD.

More exposure for youth needs to happen in all the NPL level competitions and they all need to be 16 team competitions.  As soon as possible both the NSD and the ALM need also to be 16 team competitions.

As I'm looking back over Grazor's  fabulous  video thread for past Socceroo matches, and passing my now semi-pro trained coach's eye over the Socceroo teams right back to 1993, we've improved tactically, structurally and game sense by so much it is  incredible!

One can only comment on one's  knowledge  base at the time. Notwithstanding, the former pundits and coaches ( I  do not want to have to single them out) knew so little compared to  the present pundits/coaches of Millsy, Brosque, Muscat, Ange, Arnie, John Aloisi, Patrick Kisnorbo,  Popa, Grace Gill, Georgia Yeoman-Dale or Craig Foster, etc,  when they make  comments.

I can't see one?

Bit late with the joke oops