First-ever full-scale European Championships set for 2010

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First-ever full-scale European Championships set for 2010

Authored by: Aaron Richard
on Tuesday, August 25 2009 @ 08:52 am ACST

A few thoughts regarding the last post -

1. You have to have control before you can lose it. At the moment the European leagues and clubs basically run themselves. I don't think this is neccesarily a bad thing, although as the scene grows, there is increasingly a need for some kind of central decision-making process.

E.g. at the European Championships, what qualifies as a national team? Who is the official point of call for each country? This is a job for a European council.

2. There is already an active push to create an AFL Europe. The question is what form it takes and who the members are. This will all be discussed at the conference in Zagreb after the EU Cup.

3. If the European AFL market becomes large enough that a professional body to rival the AFL forms, this will be a long way off. At the moment, the pressing issue is for clubs and leagues to invest in grass-roots development and get more people playing footy on a week-to-week local basis. Tournaments are a bonus - although they have been a proven incentive for people to kick off a new club, sometimes after a long period of tyring it takes a goal like attending the EU Cup to make things happen.

First-ever full-scale European Championships set for 2010

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Tuesday, August 25 2009 @ 10:17 am ACST

I certainly agree that getting a proper AFL Europe body formed to coordinate the leagues is important and overdue, both for the sake of those leagues coordinating with each other and the AFL and also so they can introduce new countries in a good fashion.

And yes, if the AFL wants to keep some kind of coordination in place with Europe then they need to make sure they are involved in such a body in the short and medium term.

However, if at some future stage the Euro leagues are big enough that they are semi-pro or pro and don't need the AFL, then there will be no need for them to answer to the AFL as world governing body. In my opinion the AFL is by far the appropriate body for that role right now, as long as they keep doing a reasonable job, but I don't think anyone would argue, long term, that they would keep that role for eternity.

I'd like to think that in 20 or 30 years some of the leagues would start to be big enough that they would demand more say in things, and depending on how the AFL respond, the leagues might be happy enough to stay within the system for another 10 or 20 years on top of that, but at some stage the AFL's "control" would evolve or be removed to form an effectively independent body. But right now they offer enough incentive to enough countries that such a break is unlikely and for many countries would be unhelpful.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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