Win for footy in Western Sydney

Wednesday, September 29 2010 @ 07:05 pm ACST
Contributed by: Ash Nugent
Views: 3,499

A club from Sydney's west are the 2010 Sydney AFL Division Four Premiers. Quite incredibly the Premiership was won in the Auburn Tigers' debut season and in promising signs for the AFL's development plans for the region (2012 sees a Greater Western Sydney team join the AFL) the vast majority of the team are of a non-Australian background.

Whilst attracting those without affiliation for League or Union might seem less difficult than persuading passionate Rugby fans to give Australian Football a chance, it suggests the AFL is making inroads into a market where it traditionally struggled for any support, and where it does not enjoy the media exposure it gets in most other states. These inroads extend down to the juniors; in 2010, "the Auburn Auskick centre at Mona Park drew more than 150 new kids to the game - all of which were from multicultural backgrounds."

The Tigers' win was reported in local paper the Auburn Review (pages 35 and 36).

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Authored by: Troy Thompson
on Thursday, September 30 2010 @ 07:21 am ACST

Nice story on Bachar Houli in Sydney too http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticl...fault.aspx
- hopefully new coach James Hird will look on him more favourably at Essendon than Matthew Knights (apparently his form with Bendigo warranted more senior selection) - if not I am sure Kevin Sheedy would be glad to have him at GWS.

Authored by: Michael Christiansen
on Thursday, September 30 2010 @ 09:22 am ACST

This reminded me, back when I was contributing to theRoar I submitted an article on this topic that they opted not to publish......not sure why (they're a strange lot over there). At any rate, I'll stick it here with a couple of interesting links to the Parramatta Advertiser.

The AFL and Australian Football push into Western Sydney has been big news this year. For a variety of reasons.

However, it's the grass roots news that is sometimes the most exciting.

The Parramatta Advertiser carries an 'Australian Rules/footy' section in it's sports and has a 'soccer' section. Many of us know only too well the debate that a singular attribution of the term 'football' can spark. The Parramatta Addie seems to have opted for disambiguation.

Back in April, the Addie reported the kick off of the local soccer season with 11,800 kids in the Granville District Soccer Football Association competition. Granville GM Michael Briggs stated "We’re down 200 players on last year,....I can only put it down to competition from other sports. The AFL is out there with their AusKick and so on."

Interestingly the Auburn (soccer) FC are a new club in the association - having effectively moved over from Bankstown Association with 29 teams and 400 players.

Interesting - because, the 400 extra players and yet still a total drop of 200.

Interesting also because the Parra Addie in June this year reported on the new Sydney AFL team, the Auburn Tigers Footy club. Only 5 members of the founding team had played the game before. This is unmistakably brand new ground for Australian Football.

The coach is Ead Kassem, who played for Auburn’s old Aussie Rules club the Auburn Redlegs which folded back in the ‘90s. This suggests the AFL is somewhat overdue in setting it's focus on the region - however, without people like Ead Kassem then the job would be much more difficult.

Another Parra Addie story describes the Auburn region as the Front line in Aussie Rules' western front. There were 40 kids pre-registered for the 10 week Auskick program organised through the Auburn West Public school. Many more turned up on the day. AFL multicultural development officer Ali Faraj suggested "I told the guys at the office, `you can’t expect multicultural families to all register online, because some of them find it hard to use the internet with the navigation.’".

There must be something in Kassem's coaching - Auburn sit atop the Div 4 ladder undefeated. Looks like a family affair as well, as Salem Kassem is leading the goalkicking with 104 goals from 13 games, whilst Ozem Kassem has 40 from 16 games. The list of best players and goal kickers from their Rnd 16 win over Sydney Uni includes Moussa, Kassem, Alameddine, Jamal-edine, Tarbine, Kara-Ali, and Dimmock and reads pretty unlike the 'middle class' image many anti-AFL folk attempt to portray of Australian Football in NSW. Remembering that a couple of years ago the AFL was awarded a NSW Govt multicultural award.

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