Gather round and listen to a yarn being spun

Gather Round was an unqualified success. I know this because I first heard it from various AFL and media people before their planes had touched down in Adelaide in the middle of last week. It was unqualified because there was nothing to qualify it then.

Or now, or ever, apparently.

GWS star Toby Greene during the Giants’ narrow Gather Round win over Hawthorn at Norwood Oval.Credit: AFL Photos

The basis for the boast, apparently, was that all nine games were or would be sold out. Three of the games were played on two suburban grounds with negligible capacity. The other six were at the Adelaide Oval, four of them as two double-headers. One of the other two was a Crows’ game, a guaranteed sell-out.

Considering the effort the AFL made to stage Gather Round in Adelaide, it’s not that the whole round was sold out, but that it would have been embarrassing if it was not sold out. They’re good, the AFL’s spin department. We’ll give them that.

Also from the spin department, aggregate crowds over the first four weeks of the season broke records. Total club membership is again approaching a record.

Not from the spin department, since the vast majority of those people don’t live in Adelaide, and don’t have the time or the means or the inclination to pay for a weekend there, it can safely be concluded that more AFL fans than ever before could not, and did not, get to watch their teams play last weekend.

Collingwood’s Brayden Maynard flies for a mark at the Adelaide Oval on Sunday.Credit: Getty Images

The AFL notes that this was an extra round in the fixture. By this, they mean it was a bonus. But it also carries an undertone that says fans should be grateful for what they have. That is, 17 matches against other clubs, five random return fixtures – and now Gather Round, too.

To be clear, this is not to pour scorn on Gather Round because the concept was borrowed from the NRL. Not every rugby league idea is automatically bad. A carnival of footy in itself has plenty to recommend it. There used to be one at the end of every season – in Adelaide.

Nor is it to come across all anti-Adelaide. The city and the state are on a roll. Glamorous events are coming out of their ears and self-confidence is high.

Adelaide Oval’s probably the most brilliantly redeveloped stadium anywhere in the world. It stages what socially used to be the Test match of the summer until it was rescheduled to night. It’s spectacular for footy. The suburban grounds are cute in an olde-worlde Adelaide sort of way.

North Melbourne and the Brisbane Lions do battle in the Adelaide Hills on Saturday.Credit: AFL Photos

South Australia also has wonderful wineries, and wonderful eateries, which cater wonderfully for functions. You might have missed the occasional sly and subtle references to this in various commentary. Also, they’ve got Rundle Mall.

So Adelaide’s all right, and a carnival’s all right, but a carnival in Adelaide is all awry. If it was to spread the footy gospel, the AFL were preaching to the most parochial footy state of all. It’s doubtful that they won a single new footy fan there; there were none to win.

If it was to promote the game elsewhere, all elsewhere knows is that Gather Round wasn’t there. It’s doubtful the AFL won a single new fan elsewhere.

AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan and commission chairman Richard Goyder at the North Melbourne-Brisbane match on Saturday.Credit: Michael Willson/AFL Photos

It would have made a bit more sense to host Gather Round in western Sydney, where footy is invisible, or on the Gold Coast, where it could do with a push. It’s doubtful that footy can ever be more than niche in those markets, but Gather Round would have had some purpose there. The money spent could have been logged as an investment, not a party hire fee. Did you hear about those wineries, by the way?

More to the point, Gather Round could, and should, have been played in Tasmania. It’s a once rich footy state, but the game is withering there. As the AFL dithers about a team of its own for Tassie, the game withers further. The grassroots aren’t entirely in rude health in Victoria, either, but every week is Gather Round here.

I can hear the objections to a Gather Round in Tasmania: there’s not enough infrastructure, the crowds would not be the same. That’s the point: bring it, and they will come, rather than bring it to where they are already.

Besides, such as they are, the Tasmanian grounds would have sold out. Also, Tassie has some pretty decent wineries of its own. And it doesn’t have the Rundle Mall.

But for at least three more years, Gather Round will be in SA. Premier Peter Malinauskas is an active footballer and an active SA Premier, and he plays at least one of those games well. However the AFL might spin it, the politico-corporate complex rules still.

Fans at Saturday’s double-header at the Adelaide Oval.Credit: AFL Photos

Gather Round was deemed to be an unqualified success before a ball was bounced. The narrative was set in stone, so much that even when it rained on their Parade, it wasn’t and won’t be allowed to rain on their parade.

The AFL has a dirty big truckload of coal, and they’re going to keep taking it to Newcastle.

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