Opinion: Half sized versions of Australian Football have much to offer

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Opinion: Half sized versions of Australian Football have much to offer

Authored by: Christopher P. Adams, Ph.D.
on Thursday, December 31 2009 @ 01:00 am ACDT

There is no particular attachment to 9v9 in the metro competitions. Actually, I think most leagues would prefer to be 18v18 and to the extent it is possible, they have moved in that direction. So the number of participants has increased but the number of teams has remained relatively steady. The different versions of Rec footy have stayed pretty closely with 9v9 and it seems to work well.

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Opinion: Half sized versions of Australian Football have much to offer

Authored by: TimSmith
on Thursday, December 31 2009 @ 01:18 am ACDT

Brett,

It is probably because the distances between cities in the US are so huge that they are forced to create inter-city competitions.

In the UK, like you say cities are closer together, for example in the Central England league last season the teams were all within around 2.5 hours of eachother. However, this is still a bit too far and work is being done to localise it further. The issue is in each city outside of London there isn't the demand right there right then to have more than 1 team, aussie rules is so low profile and only available on pay-TV ESPN.

These last few years of rapid team creation I believe will set up a skeleton structure for Aussie Rules in the UK. Some areas are already very strong with 2 or 3 clubs within a small radius, some completely empty meaning team creation here is nearly impossible. I expect some teams on the periphery of regions to dwindle and fall out, but theres enough strong teams now in the regions to keep competition going.

If its really going to blossom into every region of the UK, the sport needs terrestrial TV coverage of AFL, and national media coverage of large local events, for example the Northern, Central, Southern, Welsh, Scottish & London grand finals (eg reports in national newspapers, BBC Sport website etc). We need to expand the game beyond the australian expats and have it predominantly British players, and this is starting to happen. However all this needs work and with the shake-up at Sport England hopefully this progress won't be knocked back a step or two.

Cheers,
Tim Smith
President, University of Birmingham Sharks

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