Footy’s finest season could be about to unfold. Three powerful, passionate, historic teams are locked on 16 flags, fighting to be the best ever. And everyone’s got the hates on The Pies! The game’s fiercest fans are frothing to get into it and scream the joint down. But the AFL has other “ideas”, Terry Brown reports.
Hooray! The footy’s back – if you live somewhere that hates footy.
Otherwise, sorry, it kinda sucks.
Serves you right for being loyal!
The AFL brains trust has had an awful summer trying to look busy.
Footy is in fine shape. The black and white magic show outdrew and out-sparkled Taylor Swift.
And with three giant foundation Melbourne teams locked on 16 flags now, this season sells itself.
The Dons, Blues and Pies have 354 years of bad blood going, and every team has vowed vengeance on the Maggies! It’s too delicious.
The dramatic Seven promo guy with the voice whales hear will need extra gonad insurance.
To their horror, the league must see their meddling isn’t needed – but that’s never stopped them before.
And, oh joy, there’s a new administration keen to hack its mark on the game.
Imagine the roar as Collingwood unfurls the 2023 flag at the ‘G before 100,024 Blues and Pies fans with hate in their hearts and a 17th flag in their fitful dreams?
Because you’ll have to imagine it.
Instead, we’re getting a half-arsed, mini-round to try to manufacture some buzz in northern places footy is not wanted.
Those AFL marketers never let us down, huh?
New clowns. Same circus!
It’s all part of a fresh, cunning plan to grow the game nationally by pissing off the entire footy heartland and Tassie this weekend.
In Melbourne, if you want to enjoy tackling, you’ll have to track down Fake Seizure Guy. If you want ball skills, there’s the clown machines at Moomba.
Otherwise, it’s a big fat zero, as in Round Zero, which sounds not nearly dismal enough.
The league are big Tay fans and especially love how she trashes an oval. It gave them a chance to pull this swifty.
Instead of waiting a week while the hallowed turf was off getting the sequins sucked out of it, they pulled four games out of their, er, fixture.
In a first for world sport and mathematics, they manufactured a first round that comes before Rd 1 and only exists in certain states, like Schrödinger’s cat?
Some team could be 0-2 after Rd 1! Carlton, please?
Very satisfied at putting maths in its place, the league then repealed the laws of neuroscience and physics to help the tribunal out.
Brayden Maynard is now required to change direction mid-flight like Rocky the Squirrel, while reading every pre-concussed mind within 10 metres. He has been training with the sugar gliders at Healesville.
(It’s hard to believe lawyers run the league!)
Not done with that, they threatened a new “modified rules” comp, exhuming the corpse of AFLX.
Maybe, if we can make footy louder and brighter and shorter, at night with skyrockets and lasers, it will appeal to people who hate footy?
People like the AFL?
The league likes a bit of manufactured drama; a bit of theatre. It’s just football they don’t get.
This time of year everyone starts square – usually. It’s the gentle time fans can dream, before the cruel fates crush down.
Last year’s injuries are this year’s fresh legs. The new kids could be anything. There is real hope and palpable excitement.
Pies fans have had a five month gloat and are hot for the middle flag of the threepeat, and the first of Whisper’s many Brownlows.
Supporters of 17 other clubs just want the Pies to shut up and bugger off, and not get that magic flag and bragging rights. That would just be too awful!
Half of them are salty they were robbed, and sore, and raw. It’s beautiful.
This year there’s an especially hot field, other than the Pies, Blues and Dons. The Giants, Lions and Swans think they’re a shot. Even the Dees have a sniff. Allegedly.
But the story of the season is the battle to be the best in history and will be played out in blockbusters at The ‘G – between Melbourne teams who have been scrapping there for 127 years.
Despite the league’s help, 2024 will be epic. The faithful are gagging for it and will forget the snub and the sneakiness.
Core fans in footy states will have to suck it up while the league fiddles with footy, again.
Luckily it’s their superpower.
Thomas Edison patented the movie camera the year the Pies, Blues and Dons first took a dislike to each other. It’s the one the league uses one for goal reviews.
These great teams have been giving each other bruises since before Aspirin was invented, and fans take it deeply personally.
It’s real and it’s what makes the game a religion, not a sport.
You can’t manufacture that passion.
Hell, the league can’t even see it.
TERRY BROWN worked for many years as a general reporter, columnist and colour writer at The Sun and Herald Sun. He is now an academic lecturing in journalism and is an unpublished novelist.
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