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It's been a bad year for the AFL’s public
image. The game in its current state is becoming less, not more,
exportable all the time – a fact that its administrators
have come to dimly realise. The game has an insular media that
constantly expresses amazement that anyone would want to watch
any other sport; an off-season in which unrepentant boofheadery
seems de rigueur for its players, many of whom, it seems, should
never leave home, never mind our shores, unless incognito; and
an international series that threatens to sink in infamy.
The potential of the International Rules game
is being squandered. AFL players are far too unthinkingly brutal
for their Irish counterparts, and despite their pronouncements
of innocence, or just the heavy implication that the Irish should
just harden the eff up, the fact is that to the uninitiated their
on-field actions look too much like sniping. To be fair to them,
though, the game does resemble Gaelic Football, and this is about
the only advantage the Irish have over the more robust and athletic
Aussies. Off the field, unfortunately, harsh denunciation is only
one “ugly Australian” incident away, even when it
takes place among some pretty ugly Irishmen.
Brendan Fevola’s unhelpful confrontation
with a Dublin barman and his subsequent spiriting away from possible
Irish justice were unforgivable. Then he came home only to make
the news for his dalliances with some teenage minor celeb. Despite
pulling a series win from the chops of failure with victory in
the Second Test, coach Kevin Sheedy seems keen to distance himself
from the entire concept next time round – which won’t
be next year.
The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) wants
to spend 2007 redrafting the laws of a game that’s currently
not “within the acceptable bounds of sportsmanship.”
It’s a dilemma for the AFL and a paradox that faces Australian
Rules Football in its attempts to go international. Considering
the fact that Chris Johnson in ’05, or Danyle Pearce and
Adam Selwood in ’06, were only doing to their Irish opponents
what they might have done to their AFL equivalents on any given
winter weekend, should it be considered a lack of sportsmanship?
Negotiating a compromise will be almost impossible. They say revenge
is an Irish specialty, and the GAA, intractable and bloodyminded
at the best of times, is also galled at the ever-alert AFL’s
attempts to poach top Irish players every time it goes near the
Emerald Isle.
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| Illustration by: Warren Taylor |
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