2010 AFL Grand Final Re-match Highlights

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2010 AFL Grand Final Re-match Highlights

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Wednesday, October 06 2010 @ 11:19 pm ACDT

We could open a similar can of worms and debate "what is the Port Adelaide Football Club", the one that has existed since 1870, or the one that entered the AFL in 1997, or is it the same, and the Port Magpies in the SANFL is a new club dating from 1997, or are they divisions of the same club?

Yes this has been much discussed in many places and we're not going to arrive at any agreement, so I'll try not to sink too much time into it again. Part of the lack of acceptance that the VFL=AFL comes from the entire way the national competition emerged, which was a bitterly fought struggle over decades, with state leagues at times wanting a national league, except the VFL not wanting it until they needed the money, and only under their terms, and only then creating it in the expansionist way that occurred. So while most people accept the way things are now and move on, it doesn't mean they accept what happened in the past to get to this point. To me it quite revisionist to think that flags or Brownlow Medallist etc in the past are automatically put by some on the same pedestal as modern flags or medallists. Some were no doubt as naturally gifted but it's just not comparing apples with apples.

Should a 1910 flag in the VFL be regarded as significant? Yes. Should a 1910 WAFL or SANFL flag be regarded as significant? Yes. They are all excellent achievements in their respective state leagues. But the whole concept of the modern league is different. It isn't simply a name change. It was a state league (with a handful of rich clubs dominating the rest) that made a decision over about a decade to expand to include representatives from the other major leagues/states to become a national competition, with far more competition, access to players, and national focus.

Like I said, there is no black and white line to divide those eras, but it doesn't mean they aren't different eras. I'm completely happy for Collingwood to say how many flags they have and be proud of them, be it broken down into VFL, AFL or VFL/AFL, so long as they make it clear, just as Mick Malthouse obviously distinguishes eras.

I'm sure if the league made a rapid transition to a several country international league then people will start to regard that new era as different to the current one. I'm comfortable with that. If they belittled AFL flags I would take issue. But I accept that things move on and change.

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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

2010 AFL Grand Final Re-match Highlights

Authored by: Sam
on Thursday, October 07 2010 @ 07:34 am ACDT

Brett, sorry for harping on this but it's not really a 'can of worms', you're suggesting something is obscure or blurred when it's actually quite clear. The official records for the AFL begin in 1897. Port Adelaides 'AFL' history begins in 1997. WAFL and SANFL flags are not relevant to the AFL. State, National or even International status are not relevant. Awards like the Brownlow and premier apply to the year and as such all have equal value, if you want to create a player or premier of the century award that's your prerogative.

Yes, no doubt some people in the future will fall into the trap of believing they're special and that time and history begins and ends in their lifetimes, but that doesn't make them correct and it's not a healthy or constructive view.

The VFL was by far the largest competition and always the driver of the formation of a national league, as is patently evident today, and that the other state leagues where largely recalcitrant and naive despite myths that have grown over the years, but that is another subject entirely.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

2010 AFL Grand Final Re-match Highlights

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Thursday, October 07 2010 @ 10:45 am ACDT

I can understand you "harping", I will too. We're passionate, just so long as we're polite. I'm way too busy for this but as you can see, my passion will over rule me.

My mention of the Port Adelaide can of worms was an example of another can of worms, which it most certainly is and is very controversial in SA and sees Port supporters themselves vigorously debating the point. It was not suggesting that Port's AFL history is ambiguous.

I believe in the context of the AFL the "Australian" stands for Australia the country, i.e. indicating the national league (as opposed to the sport of "Australian football"). You said you don't like revisionist history. Well I can assure you that when those Victorian Football League teams competed for the premiership in 1897 they most certainly were not competing for the Australian Football League premiership, regardless of how some people or organisations may choose to re-write it.

As for "the other state leagues where largely recalcitrant and naive", that's the first time I've heard that, even from the strongest defenders of the right of the VFL to consume all others.

Another example of revisionism is when there are many words said and written extolling that there are so many indigenous players in the AFL now. In fact there has always been many indigenous players at the top level in the major state leagues around Australia. However, there were apparently less playing in the VFL. I'm not sure if that was a racial issue or demographic issue. But once we had a national competition, two things happened. We had teams from the states where there were more indigenous players, and we had a draft that saw the best young indigenous players distributed across all the national league clubs more evenly. And since many of those clubs are in Victoria, the amount of indigenous players at those clubs increased. Now, since then the AFL has also instituted many comendable programs that have developed and encouraged indigenous players further, so that now they make up an impressive % of the game's players at the highest level, and that is an excellent outcome. But to simply say that x % in 1980 were indigenous and y % are in 2010 is a bit disingenous I feel, a bit of a re-write of history.

And it seems to be widely accepted that soccer was the original football and the original user of the term, and discoveries of the oldest footballs are therefore the heritage of soccer, when in fact it was just one of many football versions that emerged from a rich legacy of many varieties of football games played in England and indeed equivalents in many countries.

Plenty of people don't agree even on the name of our game. Many people won't give up Australian Rules as the name (and I still use the term Aussie Rules as often as not), despite the AFL declaring it to be Australian Football.

We had the farcical situation of Mike Sheehan presenting the best 50 footballers of all time (or was it the last 50 years) and only considered VFL/AFL footballers, when any decent thinking player from that era knew damn well that there were many champions from other states. Fortunately people like Barassi (if I recall correctly) have clearly stated as such, acknowledging they played against some of the best they had seen in interstate matches. But lists like Mike Sheehan's tend to get far more coverage and will stay in the popular memory. Unfortunately it cheapens our game's heritage. There are many who think that the game crept out of Victoria in the 1980s. It certainly doesn't help promote it to people in QLD and NSW who happily repeat that view, dismissing the obsession with the game as a Victorian disease, whereas in fact it has been the sport of Victoria, SA, WA and Tasmania for a long time. I believe the first formed league was in 1877 in SA. The SANFL claims roots back to the 1840s I think (perhaps dubiously - they didn't provide any evidence when I enquired).

Speaking of the culture of the game, I would guess the Brownlow was inspired by the Magarey, first awarded in 1898. The Sandover Medal in Western Australia followed from 1921 and Brownlow Medal in Victoria from 1924. There's a rich cultural exchange that gets obliterated by the concept of one AFL that has always existed. It's a shame the VFL didn't use red behind posts as SA did, to distinguish from the white goal posts - might have saved a few players those embarassing moments when they kick to the wrong side of the post under pressure not getting a sight at which post is which. To be uniform with the AFL they all got painted white.

To reiterate, I'm not disputing the worth or existence of the VFL flags of the past, they were great achievements and they are what they are. In general, although not always, they were probably the best teams in Australia. I just disagree about their relevance or equivalence to the modern AFL era which sees the very best Aussie Rules players from anywhere in Australia, and in fact the world. NZ may have a team one day but right now I don't think anyone is claiming that there are AFL level champion players running around the Auckland AFL, if there were there's 17 AFL clubs that would like to give them a trial (no offence guys, and I'm sure there is some young talent deserving a chance to get into the system who could be developed to somewhere around AFL quality, I'm just saying there are unlikely to be ready made AFL players, let alone AFL champions). If the Auckland AFL expanded to professional status and then included a team from Wellington in 2012, then Christchuch (2013), then Port Moresby (2020), then Tassie who had been snubbed for too long (2024), Cape Town (2030), then Cairns (2032), then the AFL got in a financial hole and Collingwood and Essendon jumped ship, and by 2070 we saw the comp renamed the World AFL, would we and should we cherishingly admire the AAFL flag of Takapuna in 1986? Perhaps. But should we hold them up as equivalent to the 2070 World flags? I don't think so. And if they renamed the AAFL to the World AFL next week, does that matter in this context? No. It's about the reality of the competition - somewhere it would have changed from local suburban to world, and the line would not be clear, but it would clearly have happened. And yes Collingwood could still proudly display their VFL and AFL flags, they are what they are.

Anyway, don't worry too much as history really is often written by the winners, so in the longer term it doesn't really matter who is right on this one. Onward and upward. We have a vibrant national league. We have record TV audiences, attendences, money, player wages, and a league that is increasingly interested in supporting international growth, which is the primary focus of this site. And whilst not perfect by ny means, they even don't get upset and have a go at us when I dispute the whole VFL-AFL thing.

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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

2010 AFL Grand Final Re-match Highlights

Authored by: Michael Christiansen
on Thursday, October 07 2010 @ 11:16 am ACDT

Gee, fans of North, Footscray and Hawthron reckon a few of those pre-1925 pennants ought not be counted.

;-)

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

2010 AFL Grand Final Re-match Highlights

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Thursday, October 07 2010 @ 09:38 pm ACDT

They all count Mick, it's just a matter of where you count them. 8)

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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

2010 AFL Grand Final Re-match Highlights

Authored by: Sam
on Friday, October 08 2010 @ 08:20 am ACDT

Brett,

You are leading us further into the areas of subjectivity which I have demonstrated are logically inconsistent.

Obviously a contemporary team will easily beat a team from history, but that is not a worthwhile or honest apples-to-apples comparison. What you seem to missing in all I have written previously is an appreciation that for each given period of time the people of that time are doing the best they can in the circumstances, they valued the premierships won in their time just as much as we value ours. Even though the standard or breadth of the competition will continue to grow on the shoulders of those involved today, the value of a premiership won today is worth just as much as a premiership in fifty years time.

The league that is called the AFL today was formally constituted in 1897. This is where official records begin, everything else like names, medals, proportions of players of given backgrounds, degrees of professionalism, Port Adelaide's history, the circumstances of national expansion, Mike Sheehan's opinions, champion players in other leagues or inclusion of new clubs are entirely irrelevant to that objective fact.

I can see that we are not going to persuade each other to the others point of view, so I will leave it here. Hopefully some others may have gained some amusement or insight from the discussion.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

2010 AFL Grand Final Re-match Highlights

Authored by: Brett Northey
on Friday, October 08 2010 @ 12:51 pm ACDT

I won't comtinue the debate either, but I will just clarify that where you said because you say I'm missing the point but the point you re-state I have mostly never disagreed with:

"Obviously a contemporary team will easily beat a team from history, but that is not a worthwhile or honest apples-to-apples comparison. What you seem to missing in all I have written previously is an appreciation that for each given period of time the people of that time are doing the best they can in the circumstances, they valued the premierships won in their time just as much as we value ours. Even though the standard or breadth of the competition will continue to grow on the shoulders of those involved today, the value of a premiership won today is worth just as much as a premiership in fifty years time."

I have stated repeatedly that I don't disregard earlier premierships and that they should indeed value their premierships, my point is that they were from, in my opinion, effectively different competitions, and if I am to compare the nature of those flags e.g. around 1900 then the appropriate comparison, if any, would be with other state leagues of that era, not the very different beast that is a national comp. Just like I won't consider a suburban Auckland flag on a par with a World AFL flag if it happened that the Auckland AFL evolved into the World AFL. It's still a worthwhile flag and it's still part of the heritage of the given club, but not particularly relevant to the hypothetical World league 50 years later. That's my point, we disagree.

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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

2010 AFL Grand Final Re-match Highlights

Authored by: Cam Homes
on Thursday, October 07 2010 @ 01:23 pm ACDT

Sam, The VFL was always the largest competition Yes.(because of Melbourne's bigger population) but don't delude yourself that the VFL was always the driver of a push to a national competion. It was NOT always the driver, in FACT it was quite the reverse for many years. In the late 60's and early 70's I think the competition that was actually called the AFL at the time was played between the top 3 or 4 teams from the SANFL, VFL, WAFL, and the Tasmanisn Football League many games played at Norwood Oval. At one point the VFL pulled out of the competition (no reason given, but most believe it was taking some of the emphasis away from the VFL) and that renegade (and loathed by the VFL) organisation the VFA took their place. That "national" comp died partly due to cost and the fact that the VFL couldn't accept or wouldn't play in a comp that might have become more relevant as Australian Football in Australia than the VFL.
And when North Adelaide defeated Carlton (I might be wrong with the defeated team) for the Championship of Australia in about 1980 or thereabout, the VFL very quickly stopped playing that "National" competition too.
The actual move of South Melbourne out of Victoria to Sydney was not a move to start a national competition either but an experiment to see if footy would be watched in Sydney and at the same time save Sourh Melbourne from disappearing forever from the face of Aussie Footy. It did actually work to much surprised of many in the VFL and Victoria. Let's face it the name change to AFL didn't happen till a couple of years after the Swans moved and they continued to be South Melbourne when they played in Mwlbourne for quite number of years.
The VFL always the driver for a national competition?
You're buying a Monty Python arguement with that assertion, Yes it did, No it didn't. Yes it did. No it didn't. This isn't an argument. Yes it is. No it isn't. You have nil cred to back your arguement.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

2010 AFL Grand Final Re-match Highlights

Authored by: Cam Homes
on Thursday, October 07 2010 @ 01:33 pm ACDT

By the way the move of South Melbourne came after a match played in Sydney (don't remember who between) could have been North Adelaide(Barrie Robran Broke his leg),( might have been an interstate match) demonstrated that there was an audience for Australian Football if played at the top level in Sydney.

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Brett Northey - Co-founder and Chief Editor of WFN

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