Flag football’s admission into the Los Angeles Olympics will lead to a cross-code recruitment drive in Australia

The lure of Olympic gold will be dangled in front of leading Australian athletes ahead of flag football‘s LA debut, writes SHANNON GILL.

Bronco Reece Walsh is one of a number of athletes who may be lured by the NFL and Gridrion Australia to compete in the 2028 Olympics. Picture: NRL photos

AFL, NRL and Australian Diamonds netball stars will be targeted to perform at the Los Angeles Olympics after confirmation this week flag football will be added to the 2028 program.

Flag football, similar to gridiron but without the tackling, will make its debut in the NFL’s heartland and Gridiron Australia chief executive Wade Kelly said his organisation would target “cross over” stars from other sports by asking them a simple question: ‘How would you like to win an Olympic Gold medal?’

Kelly, a former Brisbane and North Sydney rugby league and union player, said the touch version of gridiron is perfectly suited to Australian athletes.

“It‘s a 360 degree game, you’ve got to get downfield, turn around and catch the ball,” Kelly said. “That’s AFL, that’s netball, that’s basketball. And then you throw in the league and union guys who are used to playing Oztag.

“You take a Reece Walsh or a Josh Addo-Carr who by then would be getting towards the back-end of their careers; here’s a carrot.

“ (AFLW player) Tayla Harris would be a phenomenal flag player, (NRLW Rooster) Isabelle Kelly would be phenomenal flag player. You look at netball, every single one of the Diamonds would make a great flag player.”

AFLW star Tayla Harris has been earmarked as an Olympic target for flag football. Picture: Daniel Pockett/AFL Photos/via Getty Images

Kelly said the sport would be flexible in catering to players who want to continue their current professional careers but dabble in flag football for the Olympics experience.

“If players come in just to make that Olympic team, that‘s fine, there’s no hard and fast rules,” he continued.

“I think it‘s going to be really tempting for them to have a go at it. There’s nothing like an Olympic gold medal. I’ve seen one in the flesh and you can’t help but stop and say, ‘Oh my God.’”

Flag football has been identified as a vehicle to grow gridiron globally, with less contact and easy-to-follow rules compared to the NFL.

The NFL’s popularity in Australia is booming and the league has already recruited AFL and rugby league stars to the US, most notably Philadelphia Eagles’ tackle Jordan Mailata, who played lower grades with the South Sydney Rabbitohs.

More established NRL stars Valentine Holmes and Jarryd Hayne also took sabbaticals from rugby to league to play with the New York Jets’ practice squad and the San Francisco 49ers respectively.

“Everyone has been talking about the NFL for the last 15 years, year-on-year it’s going nuts,” Kelly said, adding that conversations had already started with potential recruits.

“In the last 48 hours there’s been guys that play elite professional sports that have reached out, interested in playing.

“I had a conversation with an NRL player last week that would love to play in it.”

Flag football is one of a group of new sports for the 2028 Olympics, Sydney Roosters NRL junior Cayden Close is a member of the Australian team. Picture: Mark Evans/Getty Images for the AOC

Those Australian athletes would not have missed the stream of past and present NFL players expressing interest in becoming Olympians for the US team over the last 24 hours, including four-time Super Bowl champion Rob Gronkowski.

“For a lot of our AFL guys and girls, union, league, and netballers, NFL players are their sporting heroes,” Kelly said. “To get a chance to play against a Patty Mahones in an Olympics would be a dream come true.”

Gridiron Australia has fielded Australian representative gridiron teams for 40 years but its flag football offshoot has only started competitively over the last 12 months, coinciding with the NFL putting its considerable weight behind it.

The NFL set up an office in Australia 18 months ago, with a primary focus of pushing flag football under the NFL banner into Australian schools.

Last year, ten primary schools in Queensland and northern NSW competed and the winning school flew to Las Vegas to play at the NFL’s Pro bowl weekend in the international championships.

This year, 84 schools are competing for that title and Pro Bowl experience.

Charlotte Offord, the NFL‘s Australia/NZ general manager said that figure could get to 250 schools across Australia in 2024 with the added bonus of the Olympics carrot tossed in.

“Some of these kids are really good, the skill sets they’ve learned from other sports have been super-transferable to flag,” Offord said.

“What we’ve seen is kids wanting to keep playing and parents asking me ‘what’s next’. This (the Olympics) answers the question of what’s next.”

The NFL has been impressed with the skill level of school flag football in Australia, growing from 10 schools to 84 in 2023.

Kelly added that Olympic status is effective in garnering more government funding and opening doors for corporate partners.

“It gives the sport real legitimacy,” he said. “When we’re having those conversations, the Olympics says the sport is here to stay.”

This weekend, less than 12 months after their creation, the men’s and women’s Australian flag football teams head to Kuala Lumpur for the Continental Championships against a host of Asian, Pacific and Middle Eastern countries.

The team is a mixture of established full-contact gridiron players and players that have recently taken up flag football.

A hint at the cross-pollination of codes that could culminate at the Olympics is contained in these teams.

There’s Cayden Close, a junior league player in the Roosters system and Pier Pritchard who plays for North Sydney in the NSWRL Women’s Premiership. Then there’s Brad Howard who played two games for St Kilda in the AFL in 2007, along with current Essendon VFLW player Olivia Manfre.

The thought of adding some of Australia’s best athletes to those teams in the run-up to 2028 has Kelly bullish about what could be achieved at an Olympics.

“We’re really confident we’ll be in the gold medal game against the US in both mens and women‘s,” he said. “We’ve got the athletes to do it. The rest of the world knows that we’ll be the biggest threat to the US in 2028.”

Originally published as Flag football’s admission into the Los Angeles Olympics will lead to a cross-code recruitment drive in Australia