James MacSmith: How NRL got the jump on the AFL and changed the COVID-19 game
For years, much to the annoyance of League fans, AFL has been seen as the superior organisation. But the moment COVID-19 turned the tables, the AFL went into meltdown, writes James MacSmith.
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A strange thing happened during the coronavirus reset – Melbourne slipped back in time.
Two weeks behind Sydney to be exact, the equivalent of decades in today’s digital world.
As such, it was amusing to follow the banter between AFL supporters over the weekend about fake crowd noise and cardboard cut out fans in the stands.
Erudite NRL fans had been having the same conversations and making the same witty social media observations a fortnight before when the rugby league season began again. Ah, what fun it is to reminisce about the good old days.
The AFL has even been considering the groundbreaking move of having a Grand Final night. Further north, our Decider has been played in the evening since 2001.
Such discussions in the AFL world remind me of Lloyd Christmas in the film Dumb and Dumber when he learns, and subsequently celebrates, the moon landing via a newspaper cutout from 25 years previously.
What was equally amusing was the hand wringing in AFL circles when it became evident that the NRL had got the jump on them in restarting their competition post-lockdown.
“I would rather do some underwater knitting [than watch NRL],” former Victorian premier and Hawthorn Football Club president Jeff Kennett fired off.
Some bloke called Tim Watson, who nobody knows up here in Sydney, but according to Wikipedia is a former AFL player, coach and media personality, claimed it was easier for the NRL to get started again given it was played in fewer states.
Watson clearly seems to have missed all the drama about international borders. Because unlike the AFL, the NRL is an international competition. And Rugby League boss Peter V’landys did remarkably well to get the OK from the relevant authorities to allow the New Zealand Warriors to play in the restarted competition.
Former rugby league commissioner and ex-Queensland Premier Peter Beattie perhaps revealed the true mindset of the AFL when he revealed his good mate Kennett would be watching the NRL in the two weeks there was no AFL “to see if he could steal any ideas”.
For years, decades even, the AFL has been the superior run organisation, any rugby league fan will admit to that. But the moment the tables were turned, the AFL went into meltdown.
The sport universally proclaimed in Melbourne as one ‘played by thugs’, had beaten ‘Australia’s game’ to the punch.
The AFL was being left behind.
But these are, as they say, ‘unprecedented’ times. So why all the fuss?
I don’t buy into the whole Sydney v Melbourne rivalry. If you ask me, more often than not such discussions originate in Melbourne, or via Melburnians with a chip on their shoulder.
In Sydney – a true global city – we compare ourselves to the rest of the world, while Melbourne is preoccupied with getting one over ‘those Sydney wankers’.
I write in jest, of course. Like V’Landys (also chief executive of Racing NSW), who has dared suggesting moving the date of the Melbourne Cup, admitting: “I do like annoying the Victorians”. Perhaps that’s because they are easy to annoy or upset when it comes to anything relating to Sydney, and AFL versus NRL.
It’s more than a bit like sibling rivalry. Fans of both codes are of course passionate about their game. In the rugby league heartlands of NSW and Queensland, this is best seen in NSW fans’ fervoured support for their teams like the mighty Roosters or further north, for the Maroons in State of Origin.
In Victoria, they seem to adore and admire their game more as a whole.
An acquaintance once declared Sydney a grand city, of which Melbourne couldn’t compare, laneway and coffee culture aside. He might be right.
But of course plenty depends on where you grew up. I’m a league fan, but I’m sure if I grew up in Melbourne I would be celebrating the subtleties of Aussie Rules (whatever they are), and deride rugby for its rampant thuggery.
The always opinionated Eddie McGuire, who many claimed couldn’t cut it in Sydney, moved to the Harbour City from Melbourne to head up Channel 9 and moved back almost as quickly.
“The only good thing about the Sydney to Hobart [yacht race] is that you’re leaving Sydney,” McGuire later proclaimed.
A Melburnian mate of mine similarly retreated back to the Victorian capital recently after a stint in Sydney. When I jokingly suggested it was because he hated Sydney, I suspected the reply was only half a joke when he coughed back “yes!”
But each to their own of course.
And in a world in which the once fundamental right of free speech seems to be under threat, isn’t it great to be having these discussions? Respectfully, of course.
James MacSmith is a journalist for News Corp.