AFL looking over its shoulder

In response to Justine McCullagh-Beasy’s piece ‘Not jumping aboard the soccer bandwagon’, James Willoughby hits back and explains that the AFL is looking over their shoulder and rightly so as football fever hits Australia.

Let me start this piece by saying I am an AFL fan and passionately support my beloved Hawthorn. I enjoy watching the spectacle that is Australian Rules Football, but the negative bias towards football is really starting to get on my nerves.

Firstly, it is no longer called ‘soccer’. The name of the sport is now Football – the governing body is the Football Federation Australia – so please call it that.

In Justine’s article, she hints that there was no support for football in Australia before our qualification. Did she not notice the 80,000 plus who crammed Telstra Stadium for the Uruguay match or the thousands who consistently rolled up to A-League matches?

Sure, football has been associated with troubles in its past. The revamped A-League has distanced itself from the violence and hooligan element connected with the old NSL and with better marketing has introduced several newbies to football.

In Australia, football is on the rise – you can have no doubts about that.

Football is the world game. AFL has only been run successfully in one country. Due to poor marketing and management, the world game had never captured the imagination of Joe Public – until now.

The argument that consistently comes up is that no goals, equals a boring match. I have seen plenty of pulsating 0-0 draws in my time that would I much rather watch than an AFL game.

Things are different in football. Because goals are so rare, when one is scored there is an outbreak of emotion which can never be matched in the AFL. In an AFL game, their might be 30 goals scored but the skill required to just score that one goal in football and the joyous celebrations that follow are impossible to match.

In the AFL, you can have a horrible year and go winless – only to snaffle high draft picks and be on your way back up. However that club will still be playing in the same league the next year, with most or all of the same players and the same attendances.

However, a winless year in football means relegation which can tear a club to shreds. Relegation means dropping down a league, losing most if not all of your players, worse crowds, going broke in many cases and a sharp decline in the standard of football.

Simply, football has so much more on the line.

With the quality of AFL decreasing and turning into more of a ‘keepings-off’ battle and turning away many fans, maybe they will switch to football and follow the world game.

Every time I read a newspaper or switch on the TV these days, I hear AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou comment on how he is ‘not scared’ of football, and welcomes the competition.

But the fact that football can fill the MCG with 95,000 people for in reality a meaningless practice match – and some AFL sides are struggling to get more than 20,000 to their home games, is damning.

Watch out AFL, football is coming – and you know it.

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