By Billie Eder
Take the highlights reel from American football and put it in a blender with netball, AFL and Oztag, and you get flag football, a non-contact game that’s one of six new sports being added to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Flag has all the components of American football (also known as gridiron) that you see in the movies – the quarterback, touchdowns and end zones – without the heavy contact and helmets.
Tamika Sutton (left) and Pier Pritchard are off to Finland with the Australian flag football team. Credit: Steven Siewert
While still relatively unknown in Australia, flag has a long history in the United States. But the local game has been bubbling away under the surface, and the national men’s and women’s teams are currently in Finland for the 2024 world championships.
With confirmation the sport will be in the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, there has already been an increase in interest, says American Football Australia chief executive Wade Kelly.
Australian flag footballer Tamika Sutton.Credit: Steven Siewert
“It’s gone nuts. I get daily messages from people wanting to play flag and [asking] ‘how do we get into the Olympic pathway?’ ” Kelly said.
“It’s a cross between netball and AFL, but based on American football rules, and it’s probably a little bit of Oztag … it’s [a mix] of all those 360 pressure sports that we [Australians] grow up playing … anyone that’s played those sports picks the sport up really well because it’s simple.”
About 1000 Australians play flag football, including Tamika Sutton, who, when she is not playing on the national team, works as a PE teacher on Sydney’s north shore.
“Two years ago I was finishing my AFL season and I wanted a summer sport,” she said. “So I was just looking around and then saw an advertisement pop-up for gridiron [American football] at the local club near me which is the Northern Sydney Rebels, so I went down there, didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
“All I knew was like the American TV shows with the quarterback and the helmets and the pads and all that crazy stuff. Went down, had a go, really enjoyed it.”
Sutton would compare gridiron to flag as NRL to Oztag. “So it’s a small field, smaller numbers and instead of tackling you have flags that you need to pull off,” she said.
Australia’s campaign to qualify for the 2028 Olympics is well under way, says Pier Pritchard, who was part of the 12-person Australian team that placed second at last year’s Asia-Oceania tournament, behind Japan.
But flag is yet to go professional in Australia. Sutton and Pritchard have both crowdfunded their way to Finland through the Australian Sports Fund.
“Obviously with the Olympic Games being announced in 2028 in LA, and because flag is one of the debut sports, hopefully in the next few years we’ll get more funding,” Pritchard said.
“Australia, we’re not qualified [for the Olympics] yet. But just knowing it’s an option for girls to be able to aspire to for the next three to four years, to work hard in the hopes that they do get selected, it’s … cool.”
The US, the current world No.1, will be difficult to beat at the world championships, when the Australians will play them for the first time.
“We have nothing to lose but everything to prove, and America’s got everything to lose, and they have to prove, it’s basically their national sport,” Sutton said.
“I’m confident in the girls, I’m confident in our abilities … I definitely think we’re going to give them a bit of a fright, a bit of a run for their money.”
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