Chase for AFL flag should not cloud clubs’ responsibility to make Australian football a bigger game

AFLX — the fast-form version of Australian football that allows the game to move beyond Australia — is launched at Hindmarsh Stadium on Thursday night with some AFL clubs ignoring the bigger picture.

BIG PICTURE. AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan’s international vision for Australian football with the new AFLX has not translated to all the 18 AFL clubs. Picture: Michael Dodge (Getty Images)

IT is fair to say many (if not all 18) AFL clubs are not convinced about AFLX, Australian football’s quick-hit game that is launched at Hindmarsh Stadium on Thursday night.

Pity. It reflects terrible short-sightedness.

At a time when the national league clubs continue to preach about needing to find new markets and new opportunities it would seem more appropriate to advance Australian football than to speculate on fake sports, such as the computer-generated eSports.

On the announcements of the six AFLX squads to feature at Hindmarsh for the seven-a-side, 20-minute games — and then the withdrawal of Brownlow Medallist Nat Fyfe from the Fremantle group — it was clear the AFL clubs, in particular Adelaide and West Coast, have a fixed priority to win real premierships rather than be pioneers.

This continues the syndrome that killed State-of-Origin football at the end of the last century — and turned the pre-season competition, once dubbed the Wizard Cup, into a farce. This reflects how the AFL premiership has become the only prize in the elite game.

Even English Premier League giant Manchester United ignored the FA Cup one season — 2000, despite holding the trophy — to focus on “bigger prizes” such as the world club championship.

Patrick Dangerfield and Chris Barrett come to blows during the International Rules Series at Adelaide Oval. Picture: Sarah Reed

The immediate debate in the AFL is whether Gillon McLachlan should have put a new prize — a cash incentive — on the line to encourage the clubs to put their stars on show in AFLX.

Why does it always come down to cash?

Don’t the AFL clubs — supposedly not-for-profit organisations — have a paramount responsibility to the game?

And what of the AFL Players’ Association pitch last year — during a protracted collective bargaining agreement — to strike a deal that has the players share in the spoils as the game grows. It is an incentive CBA — one that is supposed to make the players do more and more to promote and grow the game so that they can collect more in their hip pockets.

FLX is a strategic gamble by the AFL to make Australian football easier to play outside of the traditional territories of southern Australia. It allows for the Australian game to unfold on rectangular fields from western Sydney to the world.

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And it gives the AFL a stronger sales pitch for the critical television dollar that funds the sport — and that needs an international component while Australian television networks find it tougher to gather advertising revenue.

International Rules — that hybrid mix of Australian and Gaelic football — will not do it.

AFLX might. It will be an interesting launch at Hindmarsh Stadium Thursday and through Melbourne and Sydney on Friday and Saturday.

It is just a pity the AFL clubs are not seeing the bigger picture.

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