The Football Code Wars

 

Very good read by Richard in the smh today, on the Football Code war in western Sydney and Australian generally, he takes no sides but belives the World Cup bid has been the match that lit the fuse.

It will be interesting but Football I think has more than the NRL worried the AFL to.

 

It just shows how far football has come in the last four years, Frank Lowy has done the near impossible from a backwater broke joke to F*******K me, in my wilderest dream to where we are and YF going so well, also great buys .............but why let Flepie go.

 

Anyway hope you enjoy



http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/forces-gather-for-battle-to-win-the-west/2008/02/29/1204226993073.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Forces gather for battle to win the west

March 1, 2008

HINDSIGHT

IN CASE you spend more time with your nose in the sports section than The Monthly or Quadrant, the so-called culture wars are over. The Cultural Elite Soyaccinos came from behind to beat Balmain Riesling Right with Kevin Rudd�s buzzer-beating apology.

But just because we have reached general consensus on things such as reconciliation (good), global warming (not good) and industrial policies that reduce workers� salaries and conditions (also not good), it is not peace in our time.

Stand by for an even bloodier battle in which entrenched prejudices, distorted versions of history and appeals to the best and worst instincts of Australians will again be common. And this time, instead of skirmishing over an asparagus ravioli with a drizzle of truffle oil, you�ll be lucky to get a decent pie and chips.

Goodbye culture wars, hello footy wars. And we don�t mean the innocuous shadow-boxing in which the four competing codes have engaged over the past two decades, where they would apologetically plonk a franchise in rival territory, hand out freebies to impressionable kiddies like missionaries distributing bibles to illiterate tribesmen, or compete in intellectually bankrupt Aerial Ping-Pongers versus No Necks versus Wogballers debates.

With the Australian Football League stating its intention to accelerate its move into western Sydney and the Gold Coast, and Football Federation Australia enlisting government support for a World Cup bid while expanding the A-League, the Cold War-style division of territory is about to be replaced by hand-to-hand combat.

As the strategic moves in the war rooms of the AFL and FFA escalate tensions, revealing has been the slightly panicked reaction of rugby league diehards at the prospect of the AFL - and, inevitably, the A-League - marshalling forces on the western front.

The Herald�s Roy Masters, one of the few experts intimately acquainted with the machinations of both the NRL and AFL, described the AFL push into western Sydney as �misplaced imperialism� - a sentiment that seemed somewhat unusual given he was, at the time, on assignment with the Melbourne Storm.

Meanwhile, a throwaway line by that sabre-rattling AFL nationalist Ron Barassi that Sydney could one day host four teams prompted predictable Churchillian cant from league dial-a-quotes about how the west would never buckle under the AFL�s blitzkrieg. �We�ll fight them in the bleachers.� That sort of thing.

But, despite those stirring words, you detect some frayed nerves among league supporters. Not because of the strength of the AFL�s multimillion-dollar push, but because they fear their own forces are not yet up for the fight.

The NRL�s hesitancy in expanding its borders and the feudal nature of some traditional heartland clubs - highlighted by the Bulldogs� recent in-fighting - could make the game more vulnerable than some of its sword carriers would like to believe.

The response of NRL supporters and media propagandists - if not the NRL executive - to a potential invasion of the west is a heavy reliance on stubborn, Soviet-style resistance from a large, fanatical band of hard-core westies.

But while they prepare for the Siege of Parramatta, the invaders are already jumping the trenches and infiltrating the population.

Meanwhile, the AFL has moved on to war footing because the game that grandiosely appropriates the title �football� has made a pact with the Federal Government to bid for the 2018 World Cup.

Until recently Hans Blix would have found only a bunch of unpaid invoices for the relative firecracker that is the A-League in the FFA bunker. But, in Rudd�s patronage, the FFA now possesses a potential weapon of mass persuasion. A chance to sidle up to the Government and, while they are at it, slip a hand in the pocket and grab the funds needed to compete in an escalating arms race.

At the same time, the FFA maintains the handy facade of neutrality.

With the summer A-League not competing head to head with other codes and the World Cup impervious to criticism as a matter of �national interest�, it can pretend to be Switzerland as it secretly masses its forces.

The first casualty of war seems to be the Australian Rugby Union which, after recent cuts in government funding, has been left looking as impotent as the Japanese post-disarmament. It does not help that, in a nuclear age, its former generals were still fighting the Boer War. (Or, judging by some Super 14 games, the Bore War.)

Even for a death-or-glory general such as Stormin� John O�Neill, it could already be a matter of damage limitation as everyone goes over the top.