Originally Posted by
Jules
I contacted the AFL to see what plans they had to expand into our region. The answer was that they are definitely interested long term, but for the time being our area "belongs" to the Sydney Swans and they are trying to work with Newcastle Council to upgrade a facility to the point where the Swans can host a community round game here.
The interesting thing I found was how approachable they are. When you send an email to the FFA, you pretty much get dismissed and rebuffed. You are fed with cliches like "Thanks for supporting our game" but nothing of substance. There was a genuine difference in the way they communicate.
Look, I'm not expecting anyone on here to "join the cause" but I would at least hope that football fans could see the AFL as something they could support in the winter while they support the Jets in the summer. I heard some football chants during the Freemantle broadcast so I'd say some Glory fans follow both teams, as would people in Melbourne and Adelaide.
I've watched as many games as I could over the last two weekends and I think the complaints about the game are unfounded. It's an exciting sport. None of the games I watched got bogged down in scraps for long periods. Packs do form simply because they can't get caught with the ball and so tend not to want to hold onto it when there are a lot of people around but the players these days try to clear them as quick as possible.
There actually seems to have been an evolution in the game since I was last interested in it, which was before the A-League started - there is more "soccerring" off the ground as a valid technique to clear rucks and to pass the ball to teammates, there is also a lot more strategy in rotating through the backline and going backwards at times to retain possession (although the commentators don't seem to like this very much). I'm not sure whether the evolution in football in Australia has any impact on Aussie rules but I think it would have because both are full field games and with no structured turnover of possession, techniques for using the field to retain possession will crossover to some extent. For example, Buddy Franklin did a superb cross from the left flank to give the Full Forward a mark. One commentator thought it was a miss-kick for goal but it proved to be a clear cross into the centre.
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