The biggest problem for the AFL in getting a successful presence in Western Sydney won’t be the choice of Kevin Sheedy as coach, it won’t be the home ground or sponsorship and isn’t even the popularity of rugby league as such.
No, the largest hurdle for the AFL in setting up shop in Western Sydney is this: Australian Football is still predominantly a white Anglo/Celtic sport with a culture that doesn’t look anything like Western Sydney.
Right now the AFL doesn’t even reflect the ethnic make-up of its own Melbourne heartland, so how does it expect to sell itself to kids and their parents in the most ethnically diverse part of Australia?
Let me first address the most obvious problem with this argument - that of the amount of aboriginal people who support and play AFL
It’s amazing the amount of back patting the AFL gives itself on this issue. The AFL can draw on a highly enthusiastic population of talented young athletes gagging at the bit to play aussie rules football whenever they can. Are we supposed to be awarding the AFL a Nobel Peace Prize for recruiting these guys?
Secondly, despite AFL PR on the issue the presence of top flight indigenous footballers is not unique to Australian football, it’s just less self-conscious in league.
Have a look at the NRL’s indigenous all stars team announced recently. Most are in or could waltz into the current Kangaroos squad, they include: Matthew Bowen, Wendell Sailor, Justin Hodges, Greg Inglis, Nathan Merritt, Scott Prince, Johnathan Thurston, Carl Webb and Sam Thaiday.
Not to mention the fact that Arthur Beetson became the first Aboriginal to captain Australia in any sport when he was made Kangaroos captain in 1973.
So let’s just accept that both sports have a large, enthusiastic and talented base of indigenous players.
But go beyond the indigenous presence in AFL you’re pretty hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t look at sound like they grew up on something called “tea” which consisted of meat, three veg and Hey Hey It’s Saturday.
Yes there’s a smattering of Italians, Ron Barassi the most famous, and some Greek and well as from the former Yugoslavia, Koutoufides and Didak for example, but given we’re talking about Melbourne – a city only second to Sydney as a destination of immigrants - it’s pretty slim pickings. This is also a game that has vastly greater media saturation in Melbourne during the football season than NRL has in Sydney.
Last week The Age ran a feature on the possibility of Sudanese born Majak Daw being picked in the AFL draft, we are told that as a result “the game could change forever.” It was one of those “look how the Aussie Rules is for every Australian” kinda piece which the AFL loves.
While I only hope that Majak does get a run somewhere next year the question is why is it such a big deal that the AFL might have an African born player? The answer is because it’s never happened before despite Melbourne being a city with a lot of young African born men seemingly perfectly built for the game.
Rugby Union had an African born player not too long ago as well. He was born in Zambia, was Australian captain and became the most capped Wallaby in history. You might have heard of George Musarura Gregan.
In this instance I’m also reminded of the triumphant fan fair around the debut of the first devout Muslim to ever play AFL in 2007. How diverse this code has become that we can give this young Lebanese kid a go was the upshot.
It was interesting that this was almost ten years after Canterbury Bulldogs legend Hazem El Masri made his first grade debut and who last year retired as the highest point scorer the history of the National Rugby League.
As a Lebanese devout Muslim El Masri represents a significant minority of Western Sydney’s actual population and that’s reflected in the fan base - it’s a hell of a thing to go to a Bulldogs and Parramatta game and see 15-year-old girls screaming in their hijabs from the sideline. Right now the leading hooker in the game is the Wests’ Tigers Lebanese Aussie Robbie Farah.
The amount of Polynesian and other Pacific islander players in Rugby League has changed the game, flooding the ranks of teams at elite and junior levels.
To play Rugby Union and League is basically the cultural norm for a lot of Polynesians, helped by the fact that physically they’re built for it, but it’s also significant as youngster they feel included in the sport and watch blokes like them week after week on the park.
Look at Parramatta’s biggest superstars this year: Jarryd Hayne and Fuifui Moimoi both of islander descent and represent an area where a lot Polynesians and other islanders actually live.
And this is the point with Western Sydney. It is an area in which - according to 2006 census data - 33.1% of its population were born overseas and Greater Western Sydney has the fastest rate of people born overseas in all of Sydney.
It goes without saying that any elite football club needs the support of these people, but how does the AFL propose to get either grassroots or club support from people who have no culture of the game and don’t see people like them anywhere in it?
Not that I’m pretending the NRL is some kind of racism free UNESCO approved model of ethnic harmony, but neither are the Western suburbs of Sydney. At the very least league has the ability to give Anglos, Lebanese, Islanders and the rest a banner of some kind to march under together.
Nor does every kid in the West end up playing rugby league or union. For many neither rugby code holds much attraction and flock to soccer, but this happens in Melbourne as well, and arguably to a greater extent.
The AFL is aware of this and is already trying to get across it. This is a different kind of demographic make-up than the Swans’ supporters
At the launch of the GWS bid in August the AFL screened a montage of an Indian-Aussie kid who played Aussie Rules in West Sydney and dreamed of playing for the West Sydney team. There’s also talk from AFL boss Andrew Demetriou of setting up consultations with community groups in the area on how they want to work with the club.
With the slickness of AFL PR speak I can’t work out whether they’re setting up a football club or running a Greens’ candidate in the lower house, but it seems they’re obviously hoping to poach a following for the sport from first and second generation immigrant kids in the West. There was even a rumour than Jarryd Hayne had been approached by the new GWS franchise to switch codes.
All this makes perfect sense of course, but perhaps the AFL should think about its limited success in getting immigrant kids in its own backyard to play and support the game before going fully sick on Western Sydney.
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