Australian Football Hall of Fame should be seen as a tribute to the national game - and not as an AFL event

The greatest night is on the Australian football calendar is here and the Australian Football (not AFL) Hall of Fame is a true reflection of our national game.

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It is Australian Football Hall of Fame night.

Take note - Australian Football, not AFL - Hall of Fame night.

And there will be one South Australian football great added to the roll call of heroes in Australian football’s greatest pantheon.

Victorian-born South Australian football master Graham Cornes recently wrote of the Hall in his Advertiser column of his perception of the “Victorian bias of the selection panel”.

This prompted senior AFL staffer - and South Australian - Patrick Keane to respond on Twitter: “The Hall of Fame selectors are: two WA-based/background; two SA-based/background; two Victorian-based/background plus AFL Players’ Association chief executive Paul Marsh (born in Perth); AFL Commission chairman Richard Goyder (from WA).”

The Hall of Fame was launched in 1996 to coincide with a Victorian theme - the centenary of the VFL that has expanded to the national AFL. It did begin with some howlers, including the failure to make SA football’s grandest goalkicker, North Adelaide legend Ken Farmer, not being among the inaugural inductees.

But - with the privilege of sitting in the Hall of Fame selection committee meetings - there is no doubt today’s agenda is far from any Victorian bias.

As Keane noted: “They do their best to look across the game’s history nationally - deceased greats/ pre-national state league greats/ retiring AFL competition greats.

“I agree there’s a lot of wonderful contributors from all states not yet in, hence a huge honour to be nominated.”

Former AFL Commission chairman Ron Evans once declared at the Hall of Fame that those who deserve to be honoured ultimately are. Some just take longer than others.

This will certainly apply with the South Australian inducted this evening. As with Farmer, his induction should have been earlier. But it is not confirmed.

The Hall of Fame is richer for his presence.

Welcome to the Roast.

This week, the Roast enewsletter looks at how the AFL coaches are placed as the “coaching carousel” prepares to turn again after the fall of Brad Scott at North Melbourne.

No coach was moved on last season, but there could be as many as four AFL clubs changing mentors by the end of this year’s competition. St Kilda, Carlton and Essendon could be having that “tough conversation” with Alan Richardson, Brendon Bolton and John Worsfold, just as the Kangaroos had with Brad Scott.

Another tough conversation looming is the debate on racism on the terraces of Australian football. This will be the hot topic by the weekend after the release of “The Final Quarter” - the so-called Adam Goodes documentary - at the Sydney Film Festival on Friday.

From the private screenings in the past week, the warning in the opening credits - of a film that is “confronting and distressing” - does hold up.

Hall of Famer - and one of SA’s most-celebrate indigenous players - Michael O’Loughlin did not last through his screening session.

“I just had to get out of there,’’ O’Loughlin said. “You know what, I just started crying ...”

It is not just racism that can hound a sportsman out of his dream fields. The Roast this week looks at how “goat” - once a tag of failure in sport - has become GOAT (Greatest of All Time) ... and how one American sporting “goat” was haunted for too long by a mistake on the baseball field.

In Reality Bites there is a review of what is cooking in sport, locally, nationally and across the globe.

Welcome to The Roast.

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