Afl

[Jules]

Your still going on about this?? Go onto a Newcastle Afl forum if you want to gain newcastle support for AFL

Have you seen the other threads in Sports Bar?? They are about sports other than football and in a lot of cases people have positive and interesting opinions about them. Don't worry about where else I talk about it. I'm talking about it in a lot of different places.

[The Dunster]

Have you seen the other threads in Sports Bar?? They are about sports other than football and in a lot of cases people have positive and interesting opinions about them. Don't worry about where else I talk about it. I'm talking about it in a lot of different places.

You are too late. AFL died years ago. The sorry excuse for a sport you are getting behind is what was left in the bucket after the real game was aborted. It's all about speed and strength now. There's pretty much no real skill left in the game. Beep tests and all other sorts of useless shit / criteria are used on kids these days to cull them before a ball has even been kicked, passed, or marked.

The AFL is little more than a bigger version of the emerging Jets program.

[Jules]

You are too late. AFL died years ago. The sorry excuse for a sport you are getting behind is what was left in the bucket after the real game was aborted. It's all about speed and strength now. There's pretty much no real skill left in the game. Beep tests and all other sorts of useless shit / criteria are used on kids these days to cull them before a ball has even been kicked, passed, or marked.

The AFL is little more than a bigger version of the emerging Jets program.

The Jacko interview you posted was interesting and very amusing. I forgot how insane that guy is.

You can make that same argument about any professional sport. Rugby League is in the same boat, it's lost its personality in the Super League war. Football in Australia has never had a real personality yet. I regard Viduka as the greatest modern player we have produced and he hardly played in the NSL. You can argue that the A-League is a completely manufactured product. The marquee system has failed so far to hit its mark in attracting real personalities to the game in order to make an impact on and off the field. del Piero was the biggest coup but Sydney FC didn't take full advantage of his Italian charisma. Sydney FC managed the almost impossible. They rubbed all the Italian glitz and glamour off him and made him look like a suburban diving hack. There is only one thing keeping the A-League experiment afloat - the money from FoxSports. The FFA was hoping that Optus would provide some real competition to boost the value of the product, but they didn't come to the table. The foundations for AFL into the future are much, much stronger. They have shown with the development of the women's competition and AFLX that they can take the pioneering ideas that football in this country lead with and basically trump them with their mainstream clout.

Regarding the Aussie Rules specific issues such as flooding. Football has the same issues but to a greater extent. Parking the bus can kill off a game too. Only in football, we consider it smart tactics employed by managers to win a game. We say 0-0 draws can be an exciting contest. In Football, we say that the game goes through an evolution as new tactics are employed, achieve success and are copied. Then a master tactician comes up with a way to counter it, and the process continues. This is the so-called "beauty of the World game". But if this happens in AFL, it has killed the game?

It depends what you define as "real skill". Mark Jackson may define it as the individual ability of a tough Full Forward. But just as the interplay of Barcelona is exciting to watch, the ability of an AFL team to handball their way out of danger is also attractive to watch. I may not be a purist. I have drifted in and out of watching AFL over the years. I've played Aussie Rules and football. Troy Luff was only a couple of years above me at my club when I was playing, so we all took a lot of interest in the Swans at the time. And I followed the Swans quite closely when I lived in Sydney without becoming a hard core fan. There was just too much Newcastle in me to completely follow a Sydney team.

What my argument rests on is the relative positions of the sports in Australia. It is certain that football dominates grassroots. It is almost just as certain that in the last 12 years of trying, it has failed to translate that into mainstream support. And the main reason for this is that the A-League loses its best players overseas way too soon and gets them back way too late. When you see players like Hoole making stupid demands on the basis that if they are not accepted, he will head overseas, it seems like a structural problem. There are three things that AFL has that the A-League doesn't: a captured player market, massive crowds on a regular basis and massive corporate support. I am just starting to see that you need all three in order to dominate as a professional sport.

[The Dunster]

The Jacko interview you posted was interesting and very amusing. I forgot how insane that guy is.

You can make that same argument about any professional sport. Rugby League is in the same boat, it's lost its personality in the Super League war. Football in Australia has never had a real personality yet. I regard Viduka as the greatest modern player we have produced and he hardly played in the NSL. You can argue that the A-League is a completely manufactured product. The marquee system has failed so far to hit its mark in attracting real personalities to the game in order to make an impact on and off the field. del Piero was the biggest coup but Sydney FC didn't take full advantage of his Italian charisma. Sydney FC managed the almost impossible. They rubbed all the Italian glitz and glamour off him and made him look like a suburban diving hack. There is only one thing keeping the A-League experiment afloat - the money from FoxSports. The FFA was hoping that Optus would provide some real competition to boost the value of the product, but they didn't come to the table. The foundations for AFL into the future are much, much stronger. They have shown with the development of the women's competition and AFLX that they can take the pioneering ideas that football in this country lead with and basically trump them with their mainstream clout.

Regarding the Aussie Rules specific issues such as flooding. Football has the same issues but to a greater extent. Parking the bus can kill off a game too. Only in football, we consider it smart tactics employed by managers to win a game. We say 0-0 draws can be an exciting contest. In Football, we say that the game goes through an evolution as new tactics are employed, achieve success and are copied. Then a master tactician comes up with a way to counter it, and the process continues. This is the so-called "beauty of the World game". But if this happens in AFL, it has killed the game?

It depends what you define as "real skill". Mark Jackson may define it as the individual ability of a tough Full Forward. But just as the interplay of Barcelona is exciting to watch, the ability of an AFL team to handball their way out of danger is also attractive to watch. I may not be a purist. I have drifted in and out of watching AFL over the years. I've played Aussie Rules and football. Troy Luff was only a couple of years above me at my club when I was playing, so we all took a lot of interest in the Swans at the time. And I followed the Swans quite closely when I lived in Sydney without becoming a hard core fan. There was just too much Newcastle in me to completely follow a Sydney team.

What my argument rests on is the relative positions of the sports in Australia. It is certain that football dominates grassroots. It is almost just as certain that in the last 12 years of trying, it has failed to translate that into mainstream support. And the main reason for this is that the A-League loses its best players overseas way too soon and gets them back way too late. When you see players like Hoole making stupid demands on the basis that if they are not accepted, he will head overseas, it seems like a structural problem. There are three things that AFL has that the A-League doesn't: a captured player market, massive crowds on a regular basis and massive corporate support. I am just starting to see that you need all three in order to dominate as a professional sport.

Mark Jackson is not insane. He's one of the most knowledgeable AFL people on the planet. With respect to corporate support it's deeper than that. The corporate types own the game now - it used to belong to the people.

Prior to big business getting involved crowds were bigger in the past than they are now allowing for changes in total population - perhaps even if you don't.

Players back then loved the game. Today's players only love what the game can buy them. The A-league players think much the same way.

Fortunately for me I don't need a sporting team to support to make my life complete so to speak. And I'm certainly not going to get involved with anything funded by grubby corporate money.

[Jules]

Mark Jackson is not insane. He's one of the most knowledgeable AFL people on the planet. With respect to corporate support it's deeper than that. The corporate types own the game now - it used to belong to the people.

Prior to big business getting involved crowds were bigger in the past than they are now allowing for changes in total population - perhaps even if you don't.

Players back then loved the game. Today's players only love what the game can buy them. The A-league players think much the same way.

Fortunately for me I don't need a sporting team to support to make my life complete so to speak. And I'm certainly not going to get involved with anything funded by grubby corporate money.

I meant insane in terms of his behaviour. I agree that he smashed the interviewer in terms of knowledge of the game.

But aren't you involved in the A-League? My mistake if you aren't. Did the A-League ever belong to the people or was it formed with grubby corporate money? Not a single A-League club is member owned. Is FIFA not awash with grubby corporate money? Do the people run the FFA? I would even say that the rot in football has made its way to the grassroots, where the FFA mandated curriculum is implemented and 10 year olds talk about how much their football boots cost.

The problem is universal in professional sport so I don't think it can be used as an argument against one particular sport.

[The Dunster]

I meant insane in terms of his behaviour. I agree that he smashed the interviewer in terms of knowledge of the game.

But aren't you involved in the A-League? My mistake if you aren't. Did the A-League ever belong to the people or was it formed with grubby corporate money? Not a single A-League club is member owned. Is FIFA not awash with grubby corporate money? Do the people run the FFA? I would even say that the rot in football has made its way to the grassroots, where the FFA mandated curriculum is implemented and 10 year olds talk about how much their football boots cost.

The problem is universal in professional sport so I don't think it can be used as an argument against one particular sport.

I'm not involved in the A-league beyond being a season ticket holder for 10 years or so. But I was a VFA and VFL member through the late 1960's, 70,s 80's, and beyond.

The very rot you talk about in the FFA / A-league to grass roots level is pretty much the AFL's blueprint. It's all successful to many people - to others it's a giant whorehouse.

It's beyong sport though - it's more to do with separation of ownership and corporate / manager types com-modifying everything into a dollar figure.