Its just not AFL - Hall of Fame match Un-Australian
May 10th 2008 10:03
THE AFL has celebrated 100 years of the "game that made Australia" ironcally in a lavish over Americanised, brash extravaganza that goes against everything the game is about.
There is something not qute right about how the whole thing has been marketed.
I am willing to play Devil's Advocate to find out what others think...
The coverage started with glow sticks, millions and millions of dollars worth of fire-crackers and commentators saying this is a great celebration of 150* years of Aussie Rules..
We then have an umpire wearing over 4 killograms of batteries and camera stuff for "state of the art" technology... It got me thinking,, is this the Australian way?
And surely, with mobile phones, and cameras the size of a needle pins, can someone think of that poor umpire? Surely they could have come up with something smaller? Or maybe, in a fairly sly way it was somebody's way of getting back at the officials...
But where was I?
The straw that broke the monkey's back so to speak was the players being named individually and running onto the field basketball style...
Isn't the whole point and tradition of Aussie Rules that it is a team game? The thing that makes it so loved is that you do it with your best mates beside you... You run out as a team, TOGETHER!!?? Now as an event, I'm sure it will be hailed a success, but come on...
The AFL is towing the line that the AFL is "the game that made Australia" and that this game is designed to celebrate that? To honor that? Why then are they doing everything the American way?
The great tradition of running out as a group, you do everything together, you win together and you lose together... okay, this is a match with the game's superstars, but if you are wanting to truly celebrate the 150 year history, don't you try and keep the best things about the game? The crowd and average pundits know who these guys are, of course they do, they are the best AFL players, the cream of the crop - why oh why would you announce each player individually, it just felt forced and shallow, but that could just be me...?
Honestly - Victoria vs the DREAM TEAM? "Dream Team?" It wreaks of our big brother across the water.. Where everything has to be about big cars and big money... This isn't the Australian way - don't we love a battler, a team that beats the odds? We are not about the glitz and glamour, the bling?
It seems to me the AFL in trying to celebrate 150 years has forgotten the most basic things and most fundamental aspects of their sport.
How can it be a dream team when they are playing against Victoria and players of that calibre... Surely they could have come up with something more original and fitting such an Australian match? But then, I don't really think this is an Australian way...
I'm sure there are many who disagree with me, perhaps it is a great spectacle and I am just nit-picking... perhaps...
Now, Sport is all about an emotional attachment - and I feel nothing for this game.
Victorians will disagree, but who really feels pasionate about this game? Do we really care? Adam Goodes playing for the Vics? It just doesn't sit well with me... I know the reasons better than most, but it still doesn't seem to fit..
Maybe I am not meant to feel anything, maybe I have read to much into the whole extravaganza, maybe in its very basic form, the match is meant to make money and lots of it... I'm sure its job done on that front.
Perhaps it is just meant to entertain, similar to the Harlem Globe Trotters... I'm sure it has achieved this as well...
But as the AFL have built it as a celebration of 150* years of AFL, doesn't it seem ironic that the whole event smacks of over Americanised idealisms?
Is this a tribute to AFL or a tribute to the AFL's ever growing coffers?
I guess we will have to see the way the game is played to finally make that judgement...
Well, surpirse surpirse, the players put on a show to spite me, but then again, I was never blaming them - more the way the match was marketed...
If it was a genuine Sate of Origin type match, I would have been more than happy to watch. But to market it as a genunie tribute to the history and tradition of the game (There's those two words that keep cropping up) why not keep it Australian?
This might have been a little tongue in cheek, and it was a high-quality game of footy, but then again - how could it not be with all those players on show??
I guess I was a little annoyed at the pregame stuff, I thought they would have respected the "traditions" that they have been pushing all year a little more...
Tribute to 150 years?
There is something not qute right about how the whole thing has been marketed.
I am willing to play Devil's Advocate to find out what others think...
The coverage started with glow sticks, millions and millions of dollars worth of fire-crackers and commentators saying this is a great celebration of 150* years of Aussie Rules..
We then have an umpire wearing over 4 killograms of batteries and camera stuff for "state of the art" technology... It got me thinking,, is this the Australian way?
And surely, with mobile phones, and cameras the size of a needle pins, can someone think of that poor umpire? Surely they could have come up with something smaller? Or maybe, in a fairly sly way it was somebody's way of getting back at the officials...
But where was I?
The straw that broke the monkey's back so to speak was the players being named individually and running onto the field basketball style...
Isn't the whole point and tradition of Aussie Rules that it is a team game? The thing that makes it so loved is that you do it with your best mates beside you... You run out as a team, TOGETHER!!?? Now as an event, I'm sure it will be hailed a success, but come on...
The AFL is towing the line that the AFL is "the game that made Australia" and that this game is designed to celebrate that? To honor that? Why then are they doing everything the American way?
The great tradition of running out as a group, you do everything together, you win together and you lose together... okay, this is a match with the game's superstars, but if you are wanting to truly celebrate the 150 year history, don't you try and keep the best things about the game? The crowd and average pundits know who these guys are, of course they do, they are the best AFL players, the cream of the crop - why oh why would you announce each player individually, it just felt forced and shallow, but that could just be me...?
Honestly - Victoria vs the DREAM TEAM? "Dream Team?" It wreaks of our big brother across the water.. Where everything has to be about big cars and big money... This isn't the Australian way - don't we love a battler, a team that beats the odds? We are not about the glitz and glamour, the bling?
It seems to me the AFL in trying to celebrate 150 years has forgotten the most basic things and most fundamental aspects of their sport.
How can it be a dream team when they are playing against Victoria and players of that calibre... Surely they could have come up with something more original and fitting such an Australian match? But then, I don't really think this is an Australian way...
I'm sure there are many who disagree with me, perhaps it is a great spectacle and I am just nit-picking... perhaps...
Now, Sport is all about an emotional attachment - and I feel nothing for this game.
Victorians will disagree, but who really feels pasionate about this game? Do we really care? Adam Goodes playing for the Vics? It just doesn't sit well with me... I know the reasons better than most, but it still doesn't seem to fit..
Maybe I am not meant to feel anything, maybe I have read to much into the whole extravaganza, maybe in its very basic form, the match is meant to make money and lots of it... I'm sure its job done on that front.
Perhaps it is just meant to entertain, similar to the Harlem Globe Trotters... I'm sure it has achieved this as well...
But as the AFL have built it as a celebration of 150* years of AFL, doesn't it seem ironic that the whole event smacks of over Americanised idealisms?
Is this a tribute to AFL or a tribute to the AFL's ever growing coffers?
I guess we will have to see the way the game is played to finally make that judgement...
Well, surpirse surpirse, the players put on a show to spite me, but then again, I was never blaming them - more the way the match was marketed...
If it was a genuine Sate of Origin type match, I would have been more than happy to watch. But to market it as a genunie tribute to the history and tradition of the game (There's those two words that keep cropping up) why not keep it Australian?
This might have been a little tongue in cheek, and it was a high-quality game of footy, but then again - how could it not be with all those players on show??
I guess I was a little annoyed at the pregame stuff, I thought they would have respected the "traditions" that they have been pushing all year a little more...
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