AFLX franchises would have drawn greater emotion from fans by reviving State-of-Origin passions

The AFL is using its modified version of the game — AFLX — to search for future markets away from Australia. But the 2019 version could have cashed in on the old passions of State-of-Origin.

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They are losing their Midas touch at AFL House. The new AFLX proves as much.

The AFL’s modified game is based on an international dream. The move to franchise teams is the first step to courting some intrigued billionaires in Hong Kong, mainland China and India.

But the advent of the Flyers, Bolts, Rampage and Eddie Betts’ Deadly — as the four new AFLX franchises are called — highlights a missed opportunity from AFL House.

These four new teams should have been Origin teams — SA, the Big V of Victoria, WA and the amalgam Allies.

Geelong’s Patrick Dangerfield will captain AFLX side the Bolts. Picture: Alan Barber

AFLX Deadly team captain Eddie Betts. Picture: AAP Image/Roy VanDerVegt) NO ARCHIVING

The AFL could have cashed in on the fans’ unwavering lust for Origin teams — a concept put in mothballs in 1999 — before palming the coin of those Asian billionaires who won’t (or can’t) buy a European football team but can contemplate the ego trip in Australian sport.

Port Adelaide’s inaugural AFL president Greg Boulton repeatedly (and wisely) told the AFL during its expansion era (in the 1990s and 2000s) that Australian football fans barrack for teams and not the game.

AFLX 2019, however, does not offer teams to quickly embrace.

The AFLX model is astutely different — shortened game, rectangular field and small squads to allow Australian football to find its place beyond home shores. AFL fans will take it or leave it (they know the real stuff is not at risk).

But in this interim period — of establishing a format in Australia before exporting it to Asia as the plaything of come-and-go billionaires — there is the golden opportunity to revive the State-of-Origin concept the players and fans want.

Shaun Rehn with SA coach Russell Ebert after beating WA in a State of Origin interstate match at Football Park in 1998. AFLX could have revived the passion of State-of-Origin football, a craving the players and fans have carried for more than two decades.

A craving that runs deep with the AFL players and supporters — that cannot be answered during the AFL premiership season — could finally be satisfied in the pre-season.

It is so surprising that the AFL masters in Melbourne — who have been so creative with the game’s expansion, particularly with AFLW — did not see this.

This week — as the franchise captains, Betts, Nat Fyfe, Patrick Dangerfield and Jack Riewoldt assemble their teams with the first AFLX draft on Wednesday night — there will be millions of Australian football fans who will have their passion for the game thrown into confusion.

Yet if AFLX had been transformed from club to Origin this season every supporter would have an instant attraction to a team based on that state loyalty card that worked so well for the Adelaide Football Club in its start-up in 1990-91.

South Australians would have bonded to the AFLX team adopting the treasured red State jumper. The Vics would have thrown out their chests to fill out the navy blue Big V. West Australians, the pioneers of Origin in 1979, would have their united football pride captured by a black swan rather than an eagle.

It is a big miss from AFL House.

So who are you cheering for … Flyers, Bolts, Rampage or Deadly? Love at first sight these franchises are not.

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