Screw this for a joke

[ShockOfHair]

I've become accustomed to ill-informed assaults on AFL, but this coming from the freaking Sports Editor of the SMH, reaches a new low. The sheer contempt for Australia's most popular game is staggering.

AFL is a dead-end sport that hinders us on global stage

Every claim he makes is either factually wrong, or tries to make a completely fallacious point:

"AFL expansion is simply the subsidising of Victorian parochialism"
- Apart from the supporters in SA, WA, NSW, Qld, Tas, NT and ACT.

"In this sporting dead-end, the AFL tells players which house they live in, via the draft, and uses a salary cap to limit how much they earn."
- This is part-fantasy. In any case, the salary cap keeps the competition even, which is why it is Australia's biggest sport.

"The more AFL succeeds, the smaller the talent pool of the athletes available for international competition."
- Isn't soccer the world game, with approximately six billion potential players?

?What's the pinnacle in the AFL? A grand final appearance with Collingwood??
Which of course would make it watched by vastly more people than any A-League or Socceroos game.

[cruiser]

Explains why the AFL continues to receive poor coverage in the SMH. The article is ridiculous, flawed in its arguments and reasoning. It indicates only to his own bias rather than attemtping to explain why AFL is, by far, the most popular football code in Australia. Sydney FC couldnt even pull 15,000 to its last home final. World game? Not here.

I'm really quite over the puerile chest beating of soccer fans in this country.

[laughingnome]

Welp, that's the last time I buy the SMH.

[Norris Lurker]

This idiot compares the expansion of AFL to the spread of cane toads. Cane toads are an introduced species, they are not Australian, you stupid muppet.

In every other country, soccer is bigger than Australian football - no-one in their right mind disputes that. But we don't live in every other country in the world. And in this country we have our own game, and it's a bloody good game. So if Australia's best sports people want to play Australia's best game, then so be it.

[Damien]

Idiotic article, I can live with it from a RL point of view, they are truely the only Football code that comes close to AFL in terms of popularity in this country, but being argued from a Soccer point of view is stupidity.

The thing that actually pisses me off the most in it is that tired old argument that this is purely a Victorian game, I grew up in Tasmania and can promise him that if he wanst drop into Tas, Vic, NT or WA during footy season and he may just see what sort of base the AFL is working off when it comes into GWS and GC.

I may write to him and thank him for the additional publicity for our games expansion and maybe remind him that the AFL aren't stupid enough to think they are converting RL or Soccer fans, just using the incompetent Sydney media to get to the untapped millions.

[dimelb]

Silly stuff.
And because of the soccer bias, not widely believed anywhere in Australia.

[Norris Lurker]

I bit. I've written back to the SMH about that's muppet's article. Let's see if the SMH will publish this:

In relation to Stephen Samuelson's article; his analogy of AFL being like cane toads breaks down in that AFL is native to Australia, unlike cane toads and international sports.
The suggestion that the AFL "deliberately obstructed" the FFA's World Cup bid is also untrue. Within the confines of the original agreement that the AFL would retain access to Docklands and would be locked out of the MCG for no more than 10 weeks, the AFL gave the FFA everything they wanted for their World Cup bid.
But the underlying point, lamenting that AFL attracts elite sportspeople, is futile in a liberal democracy. Is Mr Samuelson seriously suggesting Australia should go the Soviet/Chinese route of testing all children at a young age to determine which sport the state thinks they are best suited to and then forcing them to play that sport?
AFL may not have global clout, or Frank Lowy's billions to get in bed with the government. But if people choose to play the little Aussie battler game rather than the giant multinational, is that really a bad thing?

[Kroner]

Well said Norris. What a narrow-minded soccer twit. (They're not the footballroos and the WC Final is being played in Soccer City...)

Obviously a Goalie as he can't think outside the box.

With any luck once the World Cup is over, we won't hear from him for another 4 years.

He's obviously feeling the pressure of the AFL's expansion as he's done what most professional soccer players do in on field situations, taken a dive and is whinging to the Ump/Ref/Official.

I have even less interest in soccer and anything related after that article.


Victorian parochialism.... I'm born and bred NSW and only ever supported AFL.

What do you call shopping at Westfields then since that's propping up the A League?

[-Doogs-]

Sounds (and probably looks) like someone who has stuck his head in too many scrums.

EDIT: I think its just a beat up to cause a reaction to get people to read the article through twitter retweets and the like. It's alla about "hits". They did the same with Mike Cockerill (sic) their soccer writer when he tore strips off Harry Kewell after the Germany game. Harry tried to have his journalist status removed. For the next 2 days they ran Mike @@@@@@@@erill (sic) responses on the front page of the SMH site with a quarter page shot of his ugly smirking head. It should never be about the journalist, but some of these guys have bigger egos than the players they write about.

[ShockOfHair]

Sure, the writer was trying to be "controversial" but you can do that in a way which shows you are in command of your topic. This Samuelson character is sports editor and knows nothing about AFL. Worse, he holds the game in contempt. It's like the finance editor dissing everyone who's a stock broker. You're going to lose your audience.

Anyway, I wrote in calling for him to be sacked.

At least now I understand why the SMH has Craig Forster, another puerile soccer partisan, writing for them. He wrote that he was "ashamed" of Australia because the AFL wouldn't roll over to FIFA for the World Cup bid. He's a class A f--wit.

[Adelaide Swan]

Sure, the writer was trying to be "controversial" but you can do that in a way which shows you are in command of your topic. This Samuelson character is sports editor and knows nothing about AFL. Worse, he holds the game in contempt. It's like the finance editor dissing everyone who's a stock broker. You're going to lose your audience.

Anyway, I wrote in calling for him to be sacked.

At least now I understand why the SMH has Craig Forster, another puerile soccer partisan, writing for them. He wrote that he was "ashamed" of Australia because the AFL wouldn't roll over to FIFA for the World Cup bid. He's a class A f--wit.

I think you're referring to former Socceroos player and SBS chief football(soccer) analyst, Craig Foster.

I must admit I don't his articles and commentary tbh.

He may be controversial but I do admire his passion for the game.

[Cheer Squad]

What the AFL is up against in Sydney...

This anti-AFL rant comes from the guy who is sports editor at the Sydney Morning Herald!

AFL is a dead-end sport that hinders us on global stage

[unconfuseme]

Stephen Samuelson is desperate! ... and clearly he hasn't been watching (or listening!) to that weak excuse for a ball sport, the Soccer World Cup of Diving ... what self respecting Australian Heterosexual would be caught dead playing that pansies game ... please!

[Adelaide Swan]

Stephen Samuelson is desperate! ... and clearly he hasn't been watching (or listening!) to that weak excuse for a ball sport, the Soccer World Cup of Diving ... what self respecting Australian Heterosexual would be caught dead playing that pansies game ... please!

That's a very bigoted and ignorant stance you have there.

Thousands of kids around the country play soccer, does that make them "gay".

If the game is a weak excuse of a sport, then why is it a religion in 99.9% of the world's population.

Time to get out the 1940's. Soccer isn't the problem, you are.

[unconfuseme]

Are you serious?

Have you been watching the same event?

I'm not talking about kids sport, but adults who claim to be elite athletes, who throw themselves on the ground holding their head when they get touched on the arm and then lay prone until the game is stopped! ... pathetic individuals with no self respect ... wouldn't last a minute on a netball court!

Soccer has not changed since the 1940's ... and is best played by girls and SMH editors.

... and yes, the rest of the world DOES have a problem.

Nothing more to add thanks!