"Where AFL football is about to be taught a lesson".

[unconfuseme]

I liked this bit of "opinion" ... almost sounds personal ... I wonder if he is actually a closet fan who got found out!?;

The culture of western Sydney is a masculine culture and kids who decide to play or follow Aussie rules football because rugby league is too rough are not the ones that their peers look up to. The brutal reality of the playground in western Sydney is that choosing to play or follow Aussie rules will always be considered a bit suspect.

... only thing worse that I could imagine would be if you were a pointy headed, unco, teacher's pet, who ended up a freelance journo!


I reckon much of this tripe is unresearched, and mostly plagiarised from any number of articles written over the past 30 years by insecure Sydney News Ltd journo's anyway ... probably something written by Roy Masters

Much of it is still pretty right, but so what, Sydney is different to Melbourne ... I don't think that is ever changing!

The only numbers that have changed are the number of Rugby League teams in Sydney, and the number of people who bother to go and watch them, which have both diminished! ... Swans membership numbers fluctuate, but they seem to get by, and the club seems a sustainable entity, even with just the one success in that time.

... considering the death knell dealt by Mr Atkins, it is interesting that GWS already has more members than any Sydney NRL club.


Oh, and thanks Erica! ... cool indeed!

[SimonH]

I have lived in Sydney for 18 years, including working in the west and for the last 5 years live on the fringe between the inner-west and the 'regular' west. I don't mind chatting about Aussie rules.

I have never heard anyone referring to the sport as 'GayFL' in conversation. Not even in jest. Keyboard warriors on sports forums are right into it... but they obviously don't get to socialise much.

The problem is not that it's an opinion piece, nor that the opinion it presents isn't wildly pro-AFL. The problem is that it's boring, amateurish, completely unresearched data mining-- by which I mean just starting with your conclusion and cherry-picking any evidence that supports it.

Anyone can do it: I saw a bunch of kids kicking a soccer ball around a rugby league ground. When rugby league hasn't been tearing itself apart, it's been busy setting up failed (or, in the case of the Storm, corrupt) franchises in a now-abandoned attempt to establish itself as a national code. Its TV rights sell much cheaper than AFL's even though it claims to have as many TV viewers as AFL, clearly because it's an inferior product where games aren't really watched with unbridled passion, but rather beer-swillers barely glance up from the bar to see the odd replay of a try. RL has too many minor clubs dotted throughout Sydney, propped up by now-endangered pokie revenue and playing at run-down suburban grounds that provide a lousy and unprofessional fan experience, reinforcing bad crowd figures that aren't consistent with a supposed professional national league. Plus something or other about the North Sydney Bears, spot fixing, and Willie Mason. Conclusion: rugby league is doomed, and should just pack up and give up now. Not hard, is it? And you didn't even need to go behind a paywall to get my half-baked and poorly-substantiated opinion.