AFL Grand FInal: ‘Do we want to be the Australian NFL?’
This AFL finals series has showcased the code’s booming popularity. It has also raised the question: will Australian Football ever be a truly national game?
It should be the AFL’s dream season decider.
A team from Sydney, the country’s biggest market, and Brisbane, from the other northern state the sport wants to conquer from the rugby codes.
Unprecedented interest across every state and territory could deliver a television ratings bonanza and Sydney Swans chairman Andrew Pridham says he’s “never seen as much excitement about a grand final than this one” - that includes the previous six he has been part of at the club.
This AFL grand final match up between the Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions on Saturday at the Melbourne Cricket Ground should be the NRL’s worst nightmare.
Crowds in NSW and Queensland are up to record levels, and Swans games have become the hottest tickets in town, consistently selling out the SCG and this year the Sydney club announced a record 70,740 members.
Meanwhile the game is in “rude health” in Queensland, the Lions are packing out stadiums and have a record 63,000 members.
But while this AFL finals series has showcased the code’s popularity, it has also raised issues, and begs the question: will Australian Football ever be a truly national game?
“There’s a big difference between having a national competition and a national game,” the longest serving Swans chairman and influential AFL figure Richard Colless told The Weekend Australian. “We’ve got a national competition, but we don’t have a national game…”
“But I would love to know, do we want to be the Australian NFL? Or are we comfortable that this is as good as it needs to get?”.
The AFL while it has its strengths in New South Wales and Queensland - it also has glaring weaknesses - and some would argue failures. The Gold Coast Suns have never made a finals series since their inception in 2011. And as respected rugby league official Geoff Carr once warned; Western Sydney really has become the AFL’s “Vietnam War”.
Over the past 15 years since the founding of the Giants the AFL has poured over $200 million into the franchise - and as evidenced in this 2024 finals series it is yet to grip the Western Sydney community. Some even argue the game is in “worse shape” than before the Giants set foot in the west.
The evidence was there to see on a September weekend in Homebush earlier this month.
On a cool Saturday night, just before the Sherrin was bounced, there were red empty seats everywhere at Engie Stadium. Despite the brilliant semi-final contest, narrowly won by a relentless Lions outfit, the game was a fizzer with the Western Sydney population. The next day over 50,000, mostly die-hard Canterbury Bulldogs fans jammed the Accor Stadium next door for another thrilling NRL final.
However a week later, in Sydney’s east, yet another sold out SCG crowd, this time for the Swans preliminary final win, was trumpeted as a sign of the AFL’s dominance in the state.
“It’s a reminder of the giant footprint that AFL is putting into NSW,” AFL 360 co-host Mark Robinson said in regards to the huge crowd for the Swans and Port Adelaide final. “Before we’re dead, AFL will take over the rugby league. I’m telling you.”
The Australian Rugby League Commission boss Peter V’landys called that comment “delusional”.
Colless, who served as the first AFL NSW/ACT chairman and has a deep understanding of the game in the state, called Robinson to tell him he got it wrong.
“I think what’s happened is the success of the Swans this year in terms of crowds has sort of been seen as a proxy for the game as a whole, which is a massive mistake,” Colless said.
“The SCG is not Sydney and the Swans are not the AFL as a game. We’ve had a great year in every sense of the word at the same time, Greater Western Sydney, which was seen as such a growth opportunity that they created a team to play there…I have very high regard for what GWS has done on the football field.
“But if you were to speak to people at GWS, they will tell you, as they told me, that the game in Western Sydney is in worse shape in that market or that geography than it was before GWS arrived.”
In 2019, the pioneering Auburn Giants, Western Sydney’s first women’s AFL team, was shut down. A City of Parramatta report several years ago showed the AFL is the least popular of the 11 sports listed on a pie chart. The City of Parramatta — a home local government area of the Giants — showed AFL participation was just at one percent of nearly 20,000 participants (senior and junior). Some AFL types believe the franchise should be relocated to Canberra, others believe they should be renamed the Sydney Giants and play games at the SCG in time.
There is a sense from some sports officials in Western Sydney that the AFL’s “elitism”, disdain and disinterest in what makes rugby league tick, has cost them dearly.
Colless, who was a key architect of the Swans success in Sydney and the game’s success in NSW, said more respect needs to be paid to the code’s competition in the state if AFL is to grow.
“As I understand it the AFL is looking for a new [NSW] CEO and…I think this is the last roll of the dice, not for the game’s survival, but what I want to know is, does the AFL want to be the biggest game in Australia?” Colless said.
“There’s a big difference between having a national competition and a national game. We’ve got a national competition, but we don’t have a national game. That’s a fact of life and I think Andrew Dillon’s predecessor basically treated rugby league with contempt, there was no respect. And it still fascinates me after all this time, you talk to [AFL] people, they talk about rugby, and I say ‘when you say rugby, which game do you mean?’ They [league and union] are so different, they’re culturally different, economically different, the supporter bases are totally different. And if you don’t understand who your competition is then I think you’ve got a problem.”
In Queensland the sentiment is different. Participation is absolutely booming and local footy clubs are packed. The Lions CEO Greg Swann says his franchise is thriving and in turn believes the AFL is streets ahead of rugby league.
“I just think we are way ahead [of the NRL],” Swann said. “When Cronulla played a final next door to the SCG, the Swans had a full house, and Cronulla, you know, had whatever they had, which was not many. And so I think the ratings will be huge for this AFL grand final….so the code is going really well.”
Swann, who also served as a CEO of Collingwood and Carlton, said participation numbers in Queensland are booming and described the game as being “in rude health”.
“Up at our neck of the woods, our participation numbers have gone past South Australia, we’re now chasing down WA, so it’s really growing well up in Queensland,” Swann said.
Back in Sydney’s east, Pridham also thinks there will be “astronomical” interest in the grand final and noted that their club doesn’t see rugby league as a competitor.
“The Swans don’t necessarily see the NRL as a competitor,” Pridham said. “That is putting a very Victorian lens on things to think that way. I think we have our market, and they have theirs. Aussie Rules has already arrived here, and it has been here for some time.
“The numbers speak for themselves. We have two million fans and there is a great affection for the Swans now.”
With Richard Goyder’s tenure as AFL chairman soon to be up there is a quiet push for current Commission member Andrew Ireland to take over. Ireland has an unparalleled understanding of the northern AFL markets. He was a key player in both the Brisbane Lions and Sydney Swans successfully establishing themselves as both premiership clubs and hooking into their respective markets.
When Colless at a grand final business lunch in front of 500 people on Wednesday threw his public support behind Ireland. Colless’ endorsement earned rapturous applause from the audience.
However, it is understood that Goyder is considering yet another term and that Port Adelaide chair and media personality David Koch is also keen to chair the all powerful Commission.
Whoever is steering the Commission at the forefront will be the future of the Giants and what happens next and to capitalise on AFL chief Andrew Dillon’s hope of securing 1 million AFL participants by 2033.
In an interview with The Weekend Australian, Dillon said while the grand final matchup is “great for Queensland and NSW and the two teams we have got there” but admitted the AFL’s growth strategy in those states “can’t be reliant on those two teams making the grand final…but hopefully it will stimulate more interest there.”
It has been nearly two decades of investment in both States and he knows there is more work to be done, especially in Sydney’s west.
“In parts of Sydney where we’re, we’re strong, but there’s other parts where we’ve still got a lot of work to do. There’s a challenge and opportunity and certainly in the West [of Sydney] there’s, there’s a big awareness issue for us there, and we know that, and so we’ve got to continue to work to resolve it.”
