Battle of the Codes - Most popular for 2009
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SBS Phil Micallef ran an interview with Daily Telegraph "newspaper" journo Phil Rothfield..one of
the journo's keen to run strangely anti-football and anti-Socceroo stories in recent days.
http://www.theworldgame.com.au/australia/news-ltd-bias-what-bias-196111
Here's part of the interview, and the power of football advertisers as the Telegraph loses $60,000
in one day!
According to Saturday's SMH Super 14 Aussie franchises will face an exodus of players heading to
Europe in the next two years. br /br /Aussie football fans have had to deal with this for years but
it will be interesting to see how it affects the Aussie Super 14 fan base if, as expected, such an
exodus would leave the Aussie S14 sides even further down the table than they are this year.
Anyone seen the Kaka ad recently, you know the one selling Sony TV's, with Kaka, the celebrity, and
the skill set.
Well Channel 7 have gone one better.
The weekends AFL crowd violence seemed to have been missed by many sports commentators. Funny they
never seem to miss any football "riots."
Bottles were thrown in Adelaide at the St. Kilda/Adelaide Crows game with at least one twelve year
old boy hit.
A Collingwood Dad bashed in Melbourne by three AFL fans after the game
Of course each report had a little dig at the "soccer violence creeping into our game.
Interesting to see the Japanese national newspaper advertising at the ANZ Stadium last
night...guess that doesn't happen in the AFL or Rugby League.
>
Great to hear that the first person to ring Frank Lowy to congratulate him on Socceroos qualifying
for the 2010 World Cup was fmr football boss and head of Australian Rugby Union...John O'Neill. We
need more of this.
And even Andrew Dimitriou, (see quote below) AFL Supremo has come out and has said AFL supports the
Aussie World Cup bid.
AFL might not exist in Canberra in any real form, but you have to hand it to a code that can
sell-out the MCG for a game between two suburbs on a thursday night and then expect to sell-out the
next night as well.br /br /For the life of me I've no ideabr /br /span id="fullpost"br
/For the life of me I've no idea quite why the game is quite as popular as it is in Melbourne (I've
always lived in Canberra and AFL news is pretty scare here), particular when all other codes in
Australia do well to get a crowd of 30,000 plus for any league/union/football club game.
blockquoteWe've got many more Wallabies from Canberra than Socceroos. Our Private Schools just
produce better Rugby players./blockquotebr /br /Well what a crock. This came from a Canberra Sports
Journalist I met recently.br /br /First of all the Private Schools in Canberra..... span
id="fullpost"br /have a long proud history of producing Rugby players but ask Marist, Radford,
Grammar, St Eddies and co and they'd all talk about the huge switch to football in recent years.
Take the four football codes, AFL, League, Union and Football.br /br /I often discuss, alright
argue, with my AFL mates about which code requires the greatest skills.br /br /I maintain it's
football. (No surprise there I guess!)br /br /I reckon you can transfer from football to ANY of the
other codes from the age of 12 up until 16 and you still could make a living from the game.
Herald Sun reporting on more Crowd Violence at the AFL..can't help but bring football into the
equation.br /br /http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25290100-661,00.htmlbr /br /And is
the sourceless wonder Andrew Dimitriou always looking for an AFL spin against Football.br /br
/blockquoteOne witness, who asked not to be named, said the violence was more like a soccer brawl
than a quiet afternoon watching the footy at the MCG.
We've all seen and still see the innane, fearful and just plain ignorant attempts at Australia's
finest sports journalists to mock or run down the game of football.
Why? Well you have to ask Peter FitzSimon, Roy Masters, Andrew Stevenson, Rebecca Wilson, Mike
Sheehan and all the others why they have done it over the years.
Western Force are losing millions each year, Adelaide look unlikely to get a Basketball team in the
new league, Port Adelaide with crowds of 20,000 are in dire financial difficulties.
Add in NSWRU, Adelaide United, and Brisbane Roar...not a great few years ahead for any code.
Interesting all codes are looking to expand, teams, number of games etc etc.
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Matildas Coach Tom Sermanni expresses his thoughts on the type of female football he now sees at
the Under 14 National Championships and Why the Ashleigh and Nicola Sykes should be allowed to play
in the boys Under 18 league in Western Districts League.
AFL, Rugby Union and the relatively poor Rugby League stars can only dream of the sort of reward
footballers get for playing their game.
Harry Kewell, Lucas Neill, Tim Cahill and Mark Schwarzer, can expect up to $2 million in
sponsorships prior to the World Cup, according to the World Game website today.
These days, the A-League average (salary) is more than $100,000 — a marked increase
in a few short years on the sort of wages that were offered (and often not paid by bankrupt clubs)
in the old National Soccer League.
Michael Lynch writing in The Age looks at where the A-League can source their next players from.
Canberra Times was full of stories about how much money we should give the AFL to come to
Canberra.
And as Don Furner the Raiders Coach said Brumbies, Raiders, maybe 6 AFL games if Western Sydney get
in and a A-League team, the city can't sustain 4 codes.
So the logical argument is AFL get stuffed!
AFL the darling of Australian sport, here for 150 years and with my beloved St Kilda leading the
way have only
ONE player, one current professional player Sydney Swans Craig Bolton drafted from Canberra in
their league.
One, according to the Canberra Times.
Can that be right?
A beautiful autumn evening in Canberra, early in the season, and a crowd of just 8,800 turned out
to watch the Canberra Raiders.
39,540 rocked up to celebrate Australia's qualification to the World Cup on the coldest Sydney
night of the year.
Sydney's biggest winter sports crowd of the year once again turned out for football.
Wallabies drew 39,600 to their Baa Baa's clash even with SBW spruiking the interest, and of course
this included the bigger playing squads.
Neither code could sell-out Canberra Stadium for their respective international clashes in the
Capital, although I'm giving the Socceroos a slight victory in the crowd analysis stakes.
22,000 for the Wallabies is a very healthy crowd, but with over ten years of professional rugby in
Canberra, almost 10,000 Brumbies season ticket holders, a network of email addresses, and regular
home S14 crowds of 13,000- 22,000, plus they were playing against a Six nations side in Italy, add
in the Giteau and Canberra based stars element.
Cricket, Socceroos, Wallabies and Kangaroos all vie for the title of Australia's number one
national sports team.
The AFL team lacks a real international edge so fair to discount methinks.
For years many Wallabies fans tried to put the Union side up there, but with an Aussie Union World
Cup a distant memory, and only 20,000 watching the Wallabies play in Melbourne on the weekend, the
Union side has clearly slipped down the rank if indeed it was ever really above the Socceroos.
Gotta to love the Aussie sports crowds singing in unison "bullshit." When I first heard it I
laughed long and loud. It was so uniquely Australian.
And when I write my one-eyed football blog a few mates in time-honoured Aussie way say, "Eamonn,
more bullshit," which is fair enough because it is!
Well unique at least, and bring colour and atmosphere wherever they go.
31,000 turned up to see Celtic trounce the Brisbane Roar 3-0 today at Suncorp. And a Kiwi Chris
Killen got two for the Celts.
And with Fulham and Wolves pulling in around 20,000 and 11,000 this weekend across the wide brown
land clearly the Scottish Champions have slightly more fan power than the English Premier League
clubs; no surprise there.
In this mornings Herald Sun the Head of the AFL says,
An entire AFL season could be abandoned and some clubs would "cease to exist" if the MCG was
unavailable for 16 weeks during a soccer World Cup in Australia
What a complete idiot!
At the end of the interview he thinks wiser heads will prevail and the AFL season wouldn't be
cancelled.
When you see all the kids playing and the number of people involved in the game it's always amazed
me that Commercial TV has been slow, very slow to get involved in one of Australia's major
activities.br /br /How hard can it be to get sponsors for this show and at the end of the day
that's all Commercial Telly is about, isn't it?
Proud to be an Apple eater.
Batlow Apples have joined with FFA (see below) to promote'Live Active! Live Healthy! Live
Socceroos!'
This is the first time the Batlow group has joined with a Sports Code in Australia.
Clearly football can take a message across the whole nation unlike League, or Union or even AFL.
From today's SMH:
Sponsorship consultant William Bourke of Sponsorship HQ predicted the sport (Rugby
League) would face difficulties in keeping existing sponsors and attracting new ones.
"There are so many options out there for sponsors," Bourke said. "I think soccer and the AFL will
be the primary beneficiaries, mainly because they are national sports that don't attract that level
of controversy.
