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[robbieando]

Originally posted by CureTheSane
My impression was that the AFL would allow the big flags at the SCG but not at most other grounds.
Is this right?
If it is then they are contradicting themselves.
Unless the flags are banned at all grounds in which case I don't see the big deal.

I doubt this is the work of the AFL, just the work of the CSL who have for years tried to ban Julian using his flags at all grounds. The CSL have a 6ft flag rule, yet only the MCG and Telstra Dome have size limits of 6ft, with the other grounds having no problems with them. At grounds like Manuka Oval and AAMI Stadium, they have had no problem with the Big Flags in the past and in fact at AAMI Stadium last year for the Final, Jules walked in the ground with his Big Flag poled and everything. Its just the Victorian CS's wanting to impose their will on the Sydney CS.

In my time knowing Julian, not once has his flags caused any harm to a person and the only problem the club itself has had is him waving his flags when a player is having a shot on goal because it blocks the camera view, so he was banned from waving them during play, just after goals. Its a really petty decision and one that didn't need to be made because Julian doesn't use them in Melbourne and outside of Sydney matches he uses them at only 3 other grounds.

[Cher]

Did anyone go to this??

[JF_Bay22_SCG]

Originally posted by robbieando
I doubt this is the work of the AFL, just the work of the CSL who have for years tried to ban Julian using his flags at all grounds. The CSL have a 6ft flag rule, yet only the MCG and Telstra Dome have size limits of 6ft, with the other grounds having no problems with them. At grounds like Manuka Oval and AAMI Stadium, they have had no problem with the Big Flags in the past and in fact at AAMI Stadium last year for the Final, Jules walked in the ground with his Big Flag poled and everything. Its just the Victorian CS's wanting to impose their will on the Sydney CS.

In my time knowing Julian, not once has his flags caused any harm to a person and the only problem the club itself has had is him waving his flags when a player is having a shot on goal because it blocks the camera view, so he was banned from waving them during play, just after goals. Its a really petty decision and one that didn't need to be made because Julian doesn't use them in Melbourne and outside of Sydney matches he uses them at only 3 other grounds.

Robbie has pretty much summed the situation up in a nutshell. I have laid off saying too much publicly, as the person pretty much responsable for this is a close personal friend of Des's.

To the Cheer Squads League they see me as a trouble-making ratbag out to try and get up their noses. My constant defiance to their varying attempts at intimidation and blackmail to adhere to rules they decided to set for us all does not sit well with them at all. Hence it has only sharpened their resolve to nab me and my fellow flagwavers, which only strengthen our steadfastness to keep them and wave them whereever possible.

To us, we see the big flags as doing something that is uniquely Sydney, and hence very important, to us. It is ideosyncratically us, and is something that despite every attempt possible we have kept.

There are definitely sub-issues under the surface here. If we cave in and stop waving our big flags then we are letting them win. It is their wish to have everyone looking and sounding exactly the same. The AFLCSL is a pathetic undemocratic institution run by a person removed as president of Collingwood Cheer Squad by Eddie Maguire. Yes, it is very much a group of self-indulgeant people trying their best to have people put in their place.

They know they have met their match in me. And many of them do not like it. Hence a former Cheer Squad president and now-club employee of a certain AFL club made it her business to demand to the AFL that they be banned. It appears she has finally succeded.

It is such people who made being involved with an official Cheer Squad a totally pain in the neck.

I'll be writing to the AFL about this. I cannot believe that they could seriously be so anal about something as seemingly petty as the size of a flag waved at a game. But as I said, there are far greater issues that come into play-that of preserving football culture and that fact that everyone does NOT all do exactly the same as in Melbourne.

JF