Peter V’landys gets the important stuff right. Sidestepping the pandemic to get the NRL back on the park before any other sport on the planet. Tweaking rules to make the game a better spectacle. Throwing the book at off-field idiocy. But he’s kidding himself in a regard that is fairly trivial and yet the generator of headlines and debate.
The Australian Rugby League chairman reckons Australian rules, the most popular winter code by the length of the Great Ocean Road, is a boring sport. He says AFL supporters “must love a lot of other boring things, too” and he’d rather watch The Flintstones. They’re absurd comments about a competition that is everything the NRL should aspire to be. They’re so absurd that AFL boss Gillon McLachlan hasn’t even bothered to respond, and bravo to McLachlan for that.
Now, V’landys, bless him, doesn’t mind a bit of chest-thumping. Quite often it’s warranted. He reckons he saved the AFL from a billion-dollar loss by showing how to get the premiership back on the road last year and has dismissed Australia’s only truly national code as a yawn.
The AFL is interesting enough to have two big-time clubs in Western Australia. Where the NRL has none. The AFL is interesting enough to have two big-time clubs in Adelaide. Where the NRL has none. Rather than backing itself to go national, to conquer new markets with its supposedly mega-exciting product, V’landys’ expansion plan amounts to whacking another team in Brisbane. On the national scale, the NRL is small fry compared to the AFL.
The top five AFL clubs for memberships are: West Coast (100,776 members), Richmond (100,420), Collingwood (76,862), Hawthorn (76,343) and Carlton (67,035). The top five NRL clubs for memberships are: Parramatta (29,821), South Sydney (29,670), Brisbane (27,463), Melbourne (25,411), Canberra (20,084).
V’landys’ comments about AFL aren’t particularly scathing or disrespectful. They’re actually kind of funny. You cannot blame him for trying to get the attention of Australia’s premier code. But instead of a laughable belief that the AFL is getting it wrong, V’landys should be asking, what are they getting right?
The NRL thinks it rules Brisbane and Sydney. Bunkum. The numbers suggest otherwise. The AFL’s Brisbane Lions and Gold Coast Suns are second last and last for club memberships, the true barometer of how much people really care about the clubs. The two least popular AFL clubs have memberships of 29,277 (Lions) and 16,236 (Suns).
The Lions actually have more members than the Broncos. The Suns have more than double the members of the NRL’s Gold Coast club, the Titans. Both the AFL’s Sydney teams, the Swans (48,322) and Giants (30,841), have more members than any rugby league club.
AFL memberships nationwide have reached 992,000, meaning one in 26 Australians is a card-carrying supporter of the AFL.
The NRL? With 283,000 members, less so.
On a joint table of AFL and NRL club memberships, the top 16 would all be AFL clubs. Not all of those folks seem too bored by it.
All sports are enthralling at best and tedious at worst. A great AFL game is truly great. Ditto for the NRL. They both have fixtures that are fizzers and if we’re being honest, the NRL has more of those.
V’landys’s sport has a severely lopsided competition with stacked teams dominating the battlers in mostly predictable results. If he needs proof of how dynamic the AFL can be, he may like to watch a replay of the Swans ambushing the Lions at the ‘Gabba on Saturday night.
Because that was extraordinary viewing. The Swans fielded a bunch of kids against one of the favourites for the flag at the end of a four-match day that had already featured Adelaide’s stirring upset over Geelong and Hawthorn’s one-point thriller over Essendon.
The Swans were fielding three debutants after the obligatory footage of them calling their parents with news of their call-up, a routine that has gone from being cute to a cliche. They looked like Year 7 students already capable of solving HSC maths problems.
Errol Gulden notched three goals and three assists from 19 touches. Logan McDonald booted three goals and Braeden Campbell contributed 12 disposals in a 19.11 (125) to 14.10 (94) victory that was spine-tingling stuff.
My view on V’landys’ remarks about the AFL? I grew up watching rugby league. Never in a million years would I have watched the AFL ahead of it. But when the Swans versus Lions clashed with North Queensland against St George Illawarra on Saturday night, my channel hopping stayed on the AFL.
On Sunday afternoon I was in the mood for some serious watching of football. At 1pm, I put on the AFL and stayed on it for the rest of the day. Partly because there was no NRL on until 4pm.
The NRL had a triple-header on Saturday that followed pre-game expectations. The AFL had a quadruple header that was edge-of-your-seat stuff. The NRL had a double-header on Sunday but the AFL had a triple-header.
As a nationwide product, if V’landys wants to make direct comparisons, his competition is still significantly inferior. And that’s coming from someone who used to agree with him.
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