I also found this in the same paper druzik, there was also talk about soccer gobbling up there players at grass roots, Rugby League had a story about trying to intice women to the game, we have never been able to do this in australia which is why soccer has got so many juniors in their ranks, the young generation are all following soccer too, will just have to wait for them to grow up before we can intice them back to league. Soccer is also in the best position because they have got 1 or 2 teams per-city.
NOW we are getting serious. The friendly, almost zealous reaction by the 16 AFL clubs to new teams on the Gold Coast and in western Sydney is turning bitter before our eyes. The collection of presidents who tumbled out from a meeting with the commission in February, back-slapping and chanting a chorus of "bring it on", are having second thoughts. If they had any in the first place.
For one, Collingwood's Eddie McGuire does not want Gold Coast to have salary cap concessions if it debuts, as planned, in 2011. Carlton and West Coast fear for the rest of the competition if the generous benefits in draft and trading planned for the new teams proceeds.
Greg Swann, chief executive of the Sycophants, has declared Gold Coast will have a premiership in five years if the AFL continues with its plan to smother the franchise with the jewels of the draft and the uncontracted player list.
Along with Trevor Nisbett, chief executive of West Coast, Swann has called for debate and even more caution before the present 16 clubs are, perhaps, fatally compromised in their own development.
All of this makes sense, for there is a growing concern that the AFL has embarked on its expansion plans with fervour more Pentecostal than realistic. As it works to make the Australian winter the domain principally of the indigenous game, the running of the code, the nuts and bolts of playing a match, have been treated cursorily at best. Timing stuff-ups, interchange mismanagement, unsafe workplaces, an utterly bewildering judicial system. The very workings of the game are being lost in the incense.
To get a sense of why the AFL is suddenly fast-tracking the growth of the game, you need only look at the headlines in The Australian this week. Look at Tuesday's edition: Bennett gives New Zealand a sense of history. Origin door open to Prince. Adopt Super 14 laws, says Dean. Star Olyroo facing the axe.
Next day the headlines read: Kiwis lacking respect: Smith; Karmichael in Origin hunt despite boiling Billy; Rising star too young for under-/20s; Blues stir emotions dormant for 40 years. Three days of union, rugby league and soccer as representative and international sport.
All of this in a week that the AFL is playing a match to celebrate the first 150 years of our brand of football. A Victorian team, picked on state-of-origin guidelines, will play the rest of the best - the Dream Team. In the AFL community the discussion is not about who is in the team, who should be playing on whom, what are the consequences of a win/loss?
Rather, it is why are we playing it anyway, who cares about the result, it is not a football match but merely a public relations contrivance.
As well, the growth of the code nationally has suffocated the rebirth of the concoction of that game the AFL plays with Ireland. Its return, announced last month after a two-year hiatus while selectors waited for the Irish footballers who played in the last series to be released from intensive care, has effectively gone unnoticed.
Representative football - if it is not the AFL's achilles heel, it is at least its recurring shredded hamstring. That is why the AFL is moving so rapidly to plug holes in its national structure. A kid playing soccer, union or rugby league has the chance to represent his state and his country. Strut around the international stage. With cable television bringing more and more sport of every form from every place, the insignificance of AFL on the world stage is manifest.
No doubt the A-League and the World Cup appearances in Germany have been an accelerant for the AFL's wholehearted push locally and its optimistic ventures into South Africa, Dubai and Ireland.
As sport loses its traditional boundaries, the AFL finds itself at both its strongest and weakest. The league is thriving in its traditional states. Crowds are rocketing towards record levels again with a round of football now regularly drawing more than 300,000 spectators. AFL dominates the media from Victoria to Western Australia.
The chance of the AFL playing international games - of any consequence or of half-competent standard - remains zip despite the optimism of some league commissioners who see competitive series against South Africa within 20 years.
By definition a sport that relies on club allegiances alone has finite growth. Once the AFL secures its foothold on the Gold Coast, in western Sydney and finally recognises Tasmania, well, that is about it. The fight for the ACT has been lost, the Northern Territory a dream. The 10 Victorian teams are a cluster of clubs, many on life support from the AFL, which anchors the growth of the game.
Rather than North Melbourne move to the Gold Coast, it fights for life in Melbourne and, thus, the competition is grossly compromised as the AFL must twist the normal recruiting conventions to invent a second side in Queensland. All other codes offer their participants and supporters and their next generations a dream beyond Australian shores.
The AFL cannot even sell Victoria against the Rest Of The World because supporters are now so centred on their own clubs. The AFL must win the battle of the Gold Coast and western Sydney - it has nothing else for which to fight.