How would the AFL approach the northern hemisphere

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

Let's say by some miracle a professional competition arose of the same stature of the SL but in Aussie rules ....somewhere in the northern hemisphere 

Would the AFL approach it in the same way as the NRL have done (by sabotaging world cups and not backing the international game in general) 

Or would they jump all over it and invest to expand? 

Didn't they even invent a hybrid game with Irish football to get some semblance of an international game?....shows some commitment that 

Edited August 21, 2023 by Bedfordshire Bronco

[EggFace]

I don't know but the British Rugby Lions of 1888 played a number of games of Aussie Rules and even won 6 and two thrids of the Lions were from Northern clubs that would join Rugby League.

Andrew Stoddart born over the water from me is the only Englisman who has captained in Cricket, Rugby Union and Aussie Rules.

[Anita Bath]

Enough commitment to the international series to can it after a few seasons.

 

[gingerjon]

31 minutes ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

Let's say by some miracle a professional competition arose of the same stature of the SL but in Aussie rules ....somewhere in the northern hemisphere 

Would the AFL approach it in the same way as the NRL have done (by sabotaging world cups and not backing the international game in general) 

Or would they jump all over it and invest to expand? 

Didn't they even invent a hybrid game with Irish football to get some semblance of an international game?....shows some commitment that 

There's no AFL commitment to internationals any more. They don't even do the one game a year in NZ that they attempted, and the International Cup (Australia didn't compete in it) is indefinitely cancelled.

They played a couple of end of season punch ups at the Oval in the late 80s/early 90s. They won't be happening again.

What the AFL has done really well is develop their own internal market and expanded sensibly (but ambitiously) within Australia. But they have done so in preference to ever developing outside Australia beyond the occasional borrowing of some Gaelic footballers (men and women) who might want to get paid for their sporting endeavour. I'm not even sure if there is any International Rules series lined up for any point in the future.

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

1 hour ago, gingerjon said:

There's no AFL commitment to internationals any more. They don't even do the one game a year in NZ that they attempted, and the International Cup (Australia didn't compete in it) is indefinitely cancelled.

They played a couple of end of season punch ups at the Oval in the late 80s/early 90s. They won't be happening again.

What the AFL has done really well is develop their own internal market and expanded sensibly (but ambitiously) within Australia. But they have done so in preference to ever developing outside Australia beyond the occasional borrowing of some Gaelic footballers (men and women) who might want to get paid for their sporting endeavour. I'm not even sure if there is any International Rules series lined up for any point in the future.

There is a key difference though 

We have a fully professional league already set up....and a semi pro one in France 

If they had that would they approach it on the same way the NRL do? 

The potential for growth here is huge....they have the means to do it ....seems mad 

[idrewthehaggis]

Those International Rules games were nothing more than Friday night after the pub closes brawls and pretty much killed off any future Australia against Ireland challenges.

https://www.irishmirror.ie/sport/gaa/international-rules-series-postponed-indefinitely-21816239

So the assumption is this would repeat itself in Britain. Ouch!

Edited August 21, 2023 by idrewthehaggis

[pahars]

I’m not sure they would care. The AFL likes to make a big deal of it’s Australian origin and portray other codes as imports.   
 

They claim it’s evolved from an Aboriginal game, rather then the more likely that it emerged from primitive football codes brought by British and Irish settlers. 
 

In recent years the only interest they’ve had in overseas is trying to get more coin by playing a couple of AFL matches in Shanghai. 

[Whippet13]

2 hours ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

There is a key difference though 

We have a fully professional league already set up....and a semi pro one in France 

If they had that would they approach it on the same way the NRL do? 

The potential for growth here is huge....they have the means to do it ....seems mad 

I don't see any potential for AFL in the UK, the team sports market here is pretty saturated. You say they have the means, but it would cost millions to put on even a semi-pro league - no-one is going to be interested at an amateur level, that is a huge risk for AFL. It also would have to be played October - March when cricket grounds are free, that's going to struggle to attract people to watch (let alone play) with our winter weather.

Where do you see the huge growth potential?

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

35 minutes ago, Whippet13 said:

I don't see any potential for AFL in the UK, the team sports market here is pretty saturated. You say they have the means, but it would cost millions to put on even a semi-pro league - no-one is going to be interested at an amateur level, that is a huge risk for AFL. It also would have to be played October - March when cricket grounds are free, that's going to struggle to attract people to watch (let alone play) with our winter weather.

Where do you see the huge growth potential?

I don't mate.....I said IF they basically were the same situation as NRL with an existing northern hemisphere game (which they don't have)

It was a thought experiment and I was trying to create oppurtunities to criticize the NRL and Vlandys 

[idrewthehaggis]

Well the answer to this question is how the AFL and the GAA went.

Plus where do you play Aussie rules if you want you and me to watch? I can't imagine pro County cricket grounds volunteering in season.

Perhaps a better analogy would be Lacrosse as at least that is played by "natives" here in Europe as opposed to Aussie exiles.

To digress I once thought Lacrosse to be analogy for the Toronto Wildcats experiment.

As an analogy, I wonder what if  the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) had sort an English franchise for their competition. Would it proceed like the Wildcats into failure, or would it been different?

I wonder.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

I presume they'd approach it on an aeroplane. I believe there is a direct flight from Perth to London but most flights tend to have a stopover and in recent times that stopover is quite often in Dubai. 

[The Future is League]

2 hours ago, pahars said:

I’m not sure they would care. The AFL likes to make a big deal of it’s Australian origin and portray other codes as imports.   
 

They claim it’s evolved from an Aboriginal game, rather then the more likely that it emerged from primitive football codes brought by British and Irish settlers. 
 

In recent years the only interest they’ve had in overseas is trying to get more coin by playing a couple of AFL matches in Shanghai. 

Despite what the Aussies say AFL is fusion of 19th century Rugby and Gaelic football.

Like all football codes it's origins are in the British Isles and Ireland.

Its Australian in origin as pasta

[The Future is League]

1 hour ago, Whippet13 said:

I don't see any potential for AFL in the UK, the team sports market here is pretty saturated. You say they have the means, but it would cost millions to put on even a semi-pro league - no-one is going to be interested at an amateur level, that is a huge risk for AFL. It also would have to be played October - March when cricket grounds are free, that's going to struggle to attract people to watch (let alone play) with our winter weather.

Where do you see the huge growth potential?

AFL is heavily dependent on tax payers money in Australia, which they wouldn't get in any other country. Also as well they have been caught out in NSW and QLD claiming participant junior playing numbers they didn't exist on more than one occasion just to get more tax payers money

[Copa]

They wouldn’t be able to sabotage soccer WC bids because there’s a surplus of large soccer stadiums in the UK.

In the current AFL-land they have the biggest stadiums that they share with cricket. When AFL expanded around Australia they simply moved into the cricket stadiums. So in this hypothetical you have proposed they’d move into the cricket stadiums across the UK.

If the wanted to expand across Europe they experience a similar issue to the NRL wanting to expand around Australia, a lack of decent stadia.

[eal]

I was interested in how the United States AFL League compares to Rugby League in France? The USAFL has 47 clubs with over 1000 registered players. In France, there are 30,000 registered rugby league players, not sure about the number of clubs.

[Sports Prophet]

5 hours ago, The Future is League said:

Despite what the Aussies say AFL is fusion of 19th century Rugby and Gaelic football.

Like all football codes it's origins are in the British Isles and Ireland.

Its Australian in origin as pasta

Australian Rules was codified before Rugby and Soccer. The inauguration of the AFL’s Melbourne and Geelong football clubs are neither in dispute and no professional football clubs in the world have been playing a codified sport longer than either of these two clubs.

Australian Rules is as original as soccer and rugby.

As to your statement and subsequent question @Bedfordshire Bronco, the NRL haven’t sabotaged anything. They are organising 13 Men’s and Women’s professional test fixtures in 2023, including a series of the top 3 ranked men’s teams. To say the NRL sabotaged the WC is like suggesting Britain, Germany and a few others sabotaged the Olympics in 1916, 1940 and 1944.

There wasn’t any single national governing body of Australian Rules until the 90s, so there wasn’t any strategy to grow the game professionally outside Australia despite the most recent iteration of the “International Cup” in Victoria hosting 22 Nations made up of nationals of domestic teams being a fantastic celebration of the amateur spread of the game.

The evidence however does not support any suggestion of the AFL doing much to support the growth of the growth of a professional league internationally.

Edited August 21, 2023 by Sports Prophet

[EggFace]

I posted this before but the Soccer mad Nort East of England had a healthy 9 a side 8 team comp all playing out of Rugby clubs not Cricket Clubs 10 years ago or so but it's dead just like the 1990's when we had the same amount of American Football clubs.

[pahars]

Let’s face it though there is no country in Europe that is going to go from a really tiny amateur base to a professional league in this century. 
 

Every time a country is suggested as a good place for rugby league it’s pointed out that Basketball/ Ice hockey/ Handball is a big pro sport there. On top of that American Football, Baseball and indigenous games that you’ve never heard of are popular amateur sports in a lot of countries. 

The only crazily rapid growth I can think of recently is Cricket due to the mass immigration of the mid 2010’s. Germany went from next to nothing to 370 teams and 6,000+ players. The crucial thing is though - teams- no local players, no youth, no women. When those guys reach middle age and their children are acclimatised to other sports it could collapse to nothing. 

 

 

 

[rlno1]

11 hours ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

Let's say by some miracle a professional competition arose of the same stature of the SL but in Aussie rules ....somewhere in the northern hemisphere 

Would the AFL approach it in the same way as the NRL have done (by sabotaging world cups and not backing the international game in general) 

Or would they jump all over it and invest to expand? 

Didn't they even invent a hybrid game with Irish football to get some semblance of an international game?....shows some commitment that 

Indeed they would support it. I think each club in the AFL is allowed a player from overseas.

Rugby League is ruined by self interest. RL today is all about profit I saw an old interviewwith Ken Arthurson from the mid 80's saying how Australia would never turn their back on France.....how times have changed.

[rlno1]

11 hours ago, gingerjon said:

There's no AFL commitment to internationals any more. They don't even do the one game a year in NZ that they attempted, and the International Cup (Australia didn't compete in it) is indefinitely cancelled.

They played a couple of end of season punch ups at the Oval in the late 80s/early 90s. They won't be happening again.

What the AFL has done really well is develop their own internal market and expanded sensibly (but ambitiously) within Australia. But they have done so in preference to ever developing outside Australia beyond the occasional borrowing of some Gaelic footballers (men and women) who might want to get paid for their sporting endeavour. I'm not even sure if there is any International Rules series lined up for any point in the future.

They have a competition in PNG. They fund a minor nations world cup. AFL does grow it's game.

https://www.abc.net.au/pacific/programs/pacificbeat/pacific-afl-showdown-tween-nauru-and-png-ends-n-double-upset/102574080

[The Future is League]

9 hours ago, Copa said:

They wouldn’t be able to sabotage soccer WC bids because there’s a surplus of large soccer stadiums in the UK.

In the current AFL-land they have the biggest stadiums that they share with cricket. When AFL expanded around Australia they simply moved into the cricket stadiums. So in this hypothetical you have proposed they’d move into the cricket stadiums across the UK.

If the wanted to expand across Europe they experience a similar issue to the NRL wanting to expand around Australia, a lack of decent stadia.

They certainly wouldn't get a way with the 3 strike drug rule in the UK and they certainly wouldn't get any taxpayers money, and the UK police are not like the police in Victoria, SA, WA when they called pulled over for a driving offence or asked to blow into a bag. Nudge nudge wink wink.

[The Future is League]

8 hours ago, Sports Prophet said:

Australian Rules was codified before Rugby and Soccer. The inauguration of the AFL’s Melbourne and Geelong football clubs are neither in dispute and no professional football clubs in the world have been playing a codified sport longer than either of these two clubs.

Australian Rules is as original as soccer and rugby.

As to your statement and subsequent question @Bedfordshire Bronco, the NRL haven’t sabotaged anything. They are organising 13 Men’s and Women’s professional test fixtures in 2023, including a series of the top 3 ranked men’s teams. To say the NRL sabotaged the WC is like suggesting Britain, Germany and a few others sabotaged the Olympics in 1916, 1940 and 1944.

There wasn’t any single national governing body of Australian Rules until the 90s, so there wasn’t any strategy to grow the game professionally outside Australia despite the most recent iteration of the “International Cup” in Victoria hosting 22 Nations made up of nationals of domestic teams being a fantastic celebration of the amateur spread of the game.

The evidence however does not support any suggestion of the AFL doing much to support the growth of the growth of a professional league internationally.

Tom Wills drew up the first laws of AF when he was at Rugby School in England where he played Rugby and Cricket

Surely not are not suggesting that the locals were playing AF on a cricket oval when the first fleet arrived are you? Even Fat Andy doesn't believe that.

[Sports Prophet]

3 hours ago, The Future is League said:

Tom Wills drew up the first laws of AF when he was at Rugby School in England where he played Rugby and Cricket

Surely not are not suggesting that the locals were playing AF on a cricket oval when the first fleet arrived are you? Even Fat Andy doesn't believe that.

Facts are facts. Australian Rules was codified before Rugby Union and Association Football.

I think if anything, the AFL look to promote AFL and leave ex-pats to organise and promote grassroots activity outside Australia. I think they are realists and comfortable with their position as an Australian icon, with no delusion of expanding the professional game beyond the Australian shores. Keeps them focused on the important stuff.

[Damien]

Many modern sports share common ancestors which their rules evolved from. The original codified Australian Rules were very similar to Cambridge Rules Football that had existed for decades before. It is no co-incidence that Willis studied there. This along with the likes of others, such as Sheffield Rules and FA Rules amongst various others, influenced the FA Rules that were set in 1877. Gaelic Football too was originally much more of a combination of Soccer and Rugby and much closer to these variants too. It purposely went in a different direction to differentiate itself and be less English when it was codified. Rugby obviously went in a different direction again.

The versions of all these sports have also evolved tremendously and the versions we see today are vastly different to when they were first officially codified. None are really original, they are just variations of what was played before.

Edited August 22, 2023 by Damien

[Anita Bath]

There were no such thing as the Australian Rules. Just as in england, where there existed different rules at the outset of association football ( Sheffield rules, cambridge rules) different clubs developed their own sets of rules.

 

1866 the ‘Victorian rules’ were adopted more widely and they formed the basis of the VFA competition which later became the VFL.  These rules were then adopted by competitions in other states ( WAFL, SAFL)it was only in the late 20th Century that things were remarketed as Australian Rules.