Those who know me and my writings about sport will know of my interest and reasons for supporting the GWS Giants. Today was hard, sitting amongst the dismal crowd of 5,300, watching what was possibly the worst performance in the time I have been following the team.  I can’t say my supporting life is as hard as that of long suffering Bulldogs, St. Kilda, Richmond or Melbourne supporters – the latter currently writhing in despair.

It’s still hard though. 5,300.  Loss by 130 + to a team that probably won’t make the finals. I walked very slowly to my car.

It was clearly also tough on the coach, Kevin Sheedy, whose post match press conference revealed the pressures brought to bear on the club that has so many millions of dollars riding on its long term success.  In the press conference, as outlined here, he isolated two key concerns for the club – its growth as a playing group and growth of a supporter base.  They are the main issues affecting the club and will be for the next five years.

For passionate Melbourne based football fans, Sheedy’s comments will echo loudly in the next week. He places the blame on the current performance of the Giants at the feet of existing powerful clubs unwilling to let go of existing stars whose presence at a club like the Giants would make an immediate and profound difference. As can be seen by the presence of Gary Ablett Jnr at the Suns, as well as the work of Chad Cornes last year at the Giants, experience and body development count a great deal towards the success of a team in AFL. You just can’t build a team entirely on the promise of 19 year olds.  From where I sit, if there were two more experienced players in the back, two more experienced players in the forward line, the difference would be marked.   You will hear, however, on the SEN talkback in Melbourne that clubs “shouldn’t be giving up players they developed” from a range of passionate fans.  I can understand their point. The idea of transfer, however, is a feature of most football codes in the world, but is considered sacrilege by many in AFL.

This is a key difference between the on field success of the Western Sydney Wanderers and the Giants. The Wanderers had players of varying levels of talent and experience – with key outstanding players like Ono, which helped to create a team that was quick to mature and blossom. This is why their sudden success of the year shouldn’t have been as much of a surprise as it was.  Soccer (I will call it soccer here, as distinct from Australian Football) easily transfers players from other clubs, it’s part of their game.  In AFL, it is a major, painful sticking point.

What we will also hear is reaction to his other comment – already he is being accused of being a racist.

“…That was probably a reminder of what the Swans have been telling us. (Sydney chairman) Richard Colless says you’re going to do it hard early.  So it just tells everybody how tough it’s going to be to build the club. We don’t have the recruiting officer called the immigration department, recruiting fans for (successful A-League soccer club) Western Sydney Wanderers.  We’ve got to start a whole new ballpark and go and find fans.”

It’s a silly comment, a clumsy, insensitive attempt at humour and should not have been made. What I suspect Sheedy was trying to say was that soccer has a wide following from people who come from overseas to Australia while AFL, being home grown, doesn’t have that natural, from birth support. It is an accurate observation to make, especially when we consider that the soccer mad UK is the source of the third highest number of migrants to Australia.

Source Country for Immigration Statistics, 2011 – 12 – from DIAC.

It is also the case that soccer’s supporter base in Western Sydney was well established amongst various British, Irish and non – British migrant communities long before the Wanderers came along. This explains why the Wanderer support base was quick to form. Due to that heritage, I still think Western Sydney should have had a soccer team before Sydney.  I was a supporter of the Parramatta Power back in the NSL days.  That the Wanderers was a hurried afterthought was an indictment on the A League’s founders.  However, maybe because it was an afterthought that it’s been a success.  Perhaps, if there had been more planning, Parramatta Leagues club might have stumbled in and repeated the mistakes they made with the Parramatta Power.  Due to the fact almost all games are played at Parramatta, the Wanderers are little more than a reborn Power, but this time with genuine grassroots engagement, as opposed to top – down control.

Thus, what Sheedy should have said in the press conference is that AFL doesn’t have the same cultural roots in Western Sydney as sports like soccer and rugby league and this makes it a hard, long sell.  But he didn’t, thus leading us to what will be a bit of a storm on which the media will feed for a while.

Sheedy did come out and explain his comments on Twitter later in the evening, which fit into what I suspected he meant -

What he will find very quickly though, that it’s a thorny field, talking about immigration and Western Sydney.  Accusations of dog whistling are always quick to form whenever immigration is mentioned.  It will be interesting to see where this issue heads. Soccer fans will be furious, saying that it shows that Anglo Celtic people like Sheedy see soccer as “wogball” and only played by European migrants. Yet others will see it as sour grapes because the Giants haven’t built the support that the Wanderers have.  In truth, I don’t think Sheedy should have mentioned the Wanderers at all in comparison to the Giants. They play at a different time of the year for a start and the codes don’t necessarily compete for juniors.  The two junior codes play on a different day – Saturday is soccer day, Sunday is AFL day in Sydney.

Ultimately, Sheedy should have focused on the fact there’s still work to be done on the team and on the poor mother’s day scheduling. It would have been less controversial and not make it into an us and them issue. The Giants and the Wanderers should not be fighting against each other, no matter what journalists will ask and write in their articles comparing the two codes.

As for what might happen next, I think we will see Sheedy on the TV in Sydney a bit this week, apologising, showing how he likes the cultural diversity in Western Sydney as well as soccer.  In Melbourne, however, he will be quizzed about “stealing” players from the successful clubs.

For me, though, it’s just been a hard Sunday. The Giants have a long way to go, in terms of team and crowd development. I sincerely hope these comments don’t make people think Giants fans and staffers are all racists and that we hate soccer. I just want to see better efforts from the players and more people to be part of what should be a great AFL club representing one of the best – and most misunderstood – parts of Australia.

I like watching sport. Shocking, I know. Many people don’t like it, which they will state on Twitter whenever the feeds are filled with weekend sport watching.  The argument many make about sport is that it’s helping to dumb down our society and culture, make it just about watching people kicking a football a long way or making a good dummy and flick pass. When these critics watch the coverage and culture related to sport, it’s easy to agree with their objection – from Brian Taylor’s “wowees” and 1970s style “humour”; to Tom Waterhouse being as welcome a visitor to rugby league coverage as Frank the rabbit is to Donnie Darko; Ray Warren and Phil Gould speaking against poker machine reform on behalf of their employers, Channel 9; those inane ads for VB and merchandise during cricket coverage – and whenever Ian Healy speaks; Footy Shows featuring a range of outrageous activities, from thinly veiled racism, overt sexism, homophobia and picking on pretty much anyone who is an easy target. It’s also easy to find supporting evidence of one of the most accurate charges – that sport reports are little more than recounts of games, repeated gossip, trivia and “insider talk”.

Not all sport reporting is breathless gossip and small stories exploded into massively vital ones. There are notable exceptions in terms of excellent sport writers and broadcasters – people like Brad Walter, Neil Cordy, Richard Hinds, Gideon Haigh, Jarrod Kimber, Francis Leach, Deb Spillane, Caroline Wilson and Malcolm Knox (there are more, fill in the gaps…).  These writers and commentators have a way of fitting sport into a wider context, showing why it should matter to us why things happen in sport.  Most sport writers, however, don’t.  Part of the issue for sport writers is that of “access”- which is often used as a way of justifying an amount of what is written.

Access to all available players and sporting officials is a key claim towards authority for sport writer – we often read “I was at Whitten Oval today, and…” or “Deep inside Panthers, I was talking to Phil Gould about…”. It’s often mentioned in an irrelevant context – such as when a piece on A League starts with something David Gallop texted Phil Rothfield.  This question of access is also often used as a defence of their articles by the sport writers on Twitter – the “I talked to X, I saw Y, you didn’t” approach.  It’s a similar phenomenon to whenever we hear from Canberra Press Gallery journalists about their level of acces to those notorious “anonymous sources” from the ALP. That level of access raises various questions:

1. Does being too close personally to the figures involved affects the level of objectivity and clarity of the author?

2. Does the level of access renders all “outsider” commentary on sport irrelevant and without authority

3. Does access render the articles as being “safe”, due to the fear of the journalist losing that level of access that allows him or her to write their pieces?

4. Does close access reduce sport commentary and writing to the detailed reportage of intimate details of day to day activities in the sport?

The insistence on “access” (often called “unprecedented access”) as well as experience in sport is something we see dominating sport coverage and commentary. This is why the AFL dedicated channel on Foxtel, is filled with former players or newspaper writers who have “access”.  Or Eddie McGuire (there can’t be many Chairmen of any organisations that would be allowed to their own TV show – imagine “Rupert Murdoch Tonight” or the “Alan Joyce Show”). Even the Supercoach Show, a show for people who like playing fantasy football, is now hosted by a former footballer, Brad Johnson, who doesn’t seem to know very much about the Supercoach game.  The result is that we have the same talking heads, with their unparalleled access, treading the line of being uncontroversial and largely uncritical of the game or the wider cultural impact of the game.  An exception to this is the ABC program “Offsiders”, which is often controversial – even if the panellists are Insiders with Access.  It will be a while until we see a Fan Forum show on Fox Sports, where people with no access will be able to discuss issues and comment on the game.

When it comes to be experienced or someone with access, this also shuts out and marginalises a significant sector of sport fans, commentators and writers – female fans, commentators and writers. Fox Footy is like the Marylebone and Melbourne Cricket Clubs of eras past – men only.  Women aren’t anywhere to be seen, even the week where it was Women’s Round in the AFL was advertised as “Christmas in July” on the channel. This means that sideline commentators like Barry Hall, when speaking about the “unprecedented access” the channel had to Port Adelaide’s preparations for their March 31 game, said “the women will be disappointed we haven’t got cameras in the change room”. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink…  This theme of marginalised female sport fans, commentators and writers is a continuing one. They can be poor “victims” of a partner who likes fantasy football, removed from TV commentary in the case of Kelli Underwood, or the idea that women are best employed writing about women’s sport.  Women in commercial football seem to be best employed as readers of sporting odds or as the giggling sidekick – a role Fifi Box played for a while in the NRL Footy Show – or as a target of disgusting activities undertaken by Sam Newman in the AFL Footy Show with a Caroline Wilson mannequin.  The exception to this is the ABC, with Underwood doing commentary for them, the continuing presence of Simone Thurtell and Karen Tighe on Grandstand, as well as Deb Spillane both hosting Northern Grandstand and her “Hens FC” panel show.

A solution to all of this – as it has been for the political news community, is for the blogosphere to pick up where traditional sport media leaves off and create blogs and media hubs that provide honest, varied views about sport and the wider context of sport.  One about various sports, no matter the gender of the sportspeople. Where a range of good writers write about sport in a meaningful way – but without being fussed about “access”, “exclusives” and other old media methods of excluding readers and possible contributors. We don’t have many templates for such a site.

The US has Grantland, which is an ESPN project. One of the best features in that was one that demonstrates the issue of being a journalist with access as against being a sport fan and member of society demanding the truth, explored by the creator of Grantland, Bill Simmons.  None of our sport broadcasters present such a forum.  I’m also not talking about Bound for Glory news, which is a commendable attempt at alternative sport writing featuring a range of writers, but is limited, in that it mainly concerns itself about AFL and that world.  I am speaking about a sport version somewhere between The Drum or Ausvotes 2013, which has a clean, accessible front page as well as writers who are free to contribute their pieces, no matter their “background” in sport. Not sure whether this will ever happen, but it would be nice if it did.

While Twitter and the blogosphere has been gripped by the rolling maul of Ruddmentum (and to me, the much more amusing Crean – Get On Top movement) these past weeks, I have been gripped by a much more difficult activity. As a generally non sporty person, though as an avid sport watcher, I occasionally try to work out what goes on in the world of sport, get initiated into places that are almost foreign to me. This year, it has been plunging into the (mostly male) world of Fantasy Football – in my case, AFL Dream Team and Supercoach. As with politics, it’s all about the numbers.

Being in a NSW workplace as I have been all my life, I am the only person I know who plays AFL fantasy football. I am fully aware that if I was a teacher in Victoria, I would have had to develop a pretty sophisticated understanding of the workings of the comps, both to keep up with Monday morning staffroom conversations, but also have something to talk about down at the pub on a Friday night. A female teacher friend of mine, in order to have something to talk about, decided to have fun with the concept some time ago and selects a team each year that contains players selected entirely on the basis of their names being a double entendre. Hence, Sidebottom, Suckling, Swallow (x2), Goldsack, Ryder, Plowman, Johncock… (you get the picture). For me, though, it’s a case of having no pressure to be some kind of King of the Staffroom, it’s purely diverting and fun.

In order to help fuel the obsessions, there’s a whole internet community dedicated to the numbers and machinations of the two fantasy football competitions. Amongst the best of these are Dream Team Talk, which features the occasional Youtube show with three friendly blokes talking at a pub; Supercoach Paige, which features one of the few women who talks fantasy football; a page with an amusing title picture, Sargeant Supercoach and probably one of the more interesting projects attempting to emulate 1970s football language, Jock Reynolds. These weeks have been spent trying to work out what all the numbers mean. That’s why my Twitter feed has me following a range of DT and SC experts, all talking in a foreign language. That’s why I’ll have commentary on which sauce bottle Rudd has shaken followed by cries of “Broughton isn’t rebounding the ball in the NAB Cup game”, “Ross Lyon really hates DT coaches”, “This game in Renmark has produced awesome numbers for Port”, “Swan is a definite lock”, “What do you mean Tom Mitchell isn’t playing???”, et cetera. As with any concept foreign to me, it fascinates with its coruscations.

Despite the best efforts of members of this very friendly and helpful Twitter crew (especially fellow Giants member and Dream Team Talk contributor, @RLGriffin85 and that outstanding AFL news source, @janinemcglynn), I still don’t entirely understand how the numbers work. This includes the differences between Dream Team and Supercoach. Both use quite different statistical formulas. All I have worked out really is that some players touch the ball more and get involved in the game, which gives them more numbers. But champion players like Adam Goodes and Nick Malceski aren’t really all that good for the fantasy competitions. Even my favourite player in the AFL, Kieren Jack, is barely mentioned. Apparently it hurts him to be playing with other champion players. What I have learned, however, is that the games are actually outstanding learning activities – especially in terms of providing a workout in terms of statistics, mathematics and speculation based on evidence. This is why parents shouldn’t get too worried if their children like a bit of fantasy football activity.

As an exercise in attempting to understand this world of numbers, statistics and the like, I decided to select two teams in each competition. One is my regular all sides team – the one where I have attempted to listen to all of the advice and tips from the various sources. The other is my Northern States team, consisting of players for the Sydney Swans, GWS Giants, Gold Coast Suns and Brisbane Lions. This is partially because I wanted to track how players from the Swans and Giants go in the competitions, and partially because I am very fond of any team operating in the “league states”. This is why the DT / SC crew like giving me advice on my all sides team, but are sometimes profoundly puzzled by the Northern States team. They possibly don’t understand what it’s like for a Western Sydney boy to have four sides north of the Murray to watch. Plus, they have the torrent of “coaches” asking questions about their legitimate teams. “What about Fyfe?” is more pressing than “why don’t any of these teams have cheap rookies that will get a game?”

Here are my Northern States teams – the Northern States teams are both named in honour of the Flamboyant Icon of Northern States AFL, Warwick Capper.

Dream Team

Super Coach

Then there is the All States team, built from all of the rumours, comments, research.

Dream Team

Super Coach

Summarising the gap between my political Twitter friends and the Fantasy Footyheads, almost no-one took up my invitation to join my “Flamboyant League”, also named for Mr. Capper. That is to be expected though, the worlds have almost no intersection.

Today is the big day for Fantasy Football chat and last minute panics as the numbers of changes that can be made becomes restricted. The Crean Bun Fight barely rated a blip yesterday in their world. Brad Crouch’s non selection for Adelaide made more of an impact. I hope they all remember it really is just fun rather than a reflection of their abilities as people. But maybe that’s just the view from an isolated Sydney person. Ultimately, however, I’m glad this type of thing exists. Otherwise, we’d all just be more than a little depressed about the state of play in this country.

The return of Israel Folau to rugby league has already raised a number of questions about sport, such as: whether it is possible to bend one’s body and skill from one ballsport’s requirements form to another very different ; the presence and power of money in the commercialised modern sporting world ; the very success of the GWS Giants experiment in western Sydney ; the future success of the Parramatta Eels.  It raises all these points, but also a very important element in the life of a young, developing man – the passion and engagement of a human being wishing to be very best at what they do.  This is why the discussion of Folau’s decision is pretty important in our wider culture, not just football.

As a Swans supporter of long standing who put himself in the frame of backing the GWS Giants, I have experienced a range of emotions, arguments, surges of intense engagement that is the continuing discourse of AFL.  There have been a number of things I have observed, which have led to a set of current reactions to Folau’s decision.

There has been the argument that someone of Folau’s shape and cultural background is not cut out to play AFL – the nature v nurture argument.  It was one forcefully put by Greg Baum’s piece (or to be more accurate, rant) where he said “that I don’t doubt that he tried but all he managed in the end was to reinforce the certainty that, overwhelmingly, footballers are born, not made. All that expensive nurture notwithstanding, nature wins.” It is an commonplace but ultimately poor argument.  One can, as many have, taken at face value the lack of stamina Folau had as games went on in the season. Face value only, however – many of the first year AFL players in the Giants faded as the season went on.  Many AFL experts who watched all of Folau’s games, like Neil Cordy, through the year were saying that Folau needed a good 2 years of hard slog to become a top flight player, and that he had the potential.  Cordy uses the example of Mike Pyke, the Canadian rugby player turned Swan – a player who is rapidly becoming an excellent ruckman is the prime example of this point. It took him a while to hit the heights he has now reached – his contributions in the 2012 finals series were crucial.  Folau could also have made an effective ruckman – he was developing a liking for the set play and could see the need for clever clearance play as the season went on.  We will never know, as Kevin Sheedy has said. It doesn’t follow automatically, therefore, that Folau wasn’t ever going to be a great player physically. That, I really suspect, is more a question for those who know the game in detail – the sport science people who were working to give Folau greater endurance.

The place of money in modern sport was very much a issue in the foreground of any discussion around Folau’s place in the Giants. Many in Melbourne questioned the wisdom of spending so much on a player who had never played the game. It was a core part of Baum’s argument / rant about why the experiment was a failure.  The recruiting of Folau was a larger question than mere money, however – it had more to do with Sydney and its parochialism.  In order for the Giants to succeed in Western Sydney, the AFL needed a local, well known hero in order to inspire local youth to play the game as well as drawcard and talking point. They didn’t need a Gary Ablett Jr, they needed an instant Kieren Jack.  That’s because the area is a highly parochial region that sticks by its locals and doesn’t really get as far behind outsiders who move in.  Jack may have worked on this level, due to his league heritage. However, as much as I would love the Giants to have bought Jack, I would also be devastated as he plays such a crucial role for the Swans – he is still one of my very favourite players of the game.  Besides, his style of game isn’t necessarily as crowd pleasing by itself than an Ablett or Buddy Franklin and his game flourishes because he is a vital cog in the Sydney machine.  Folau could have had that ability to be a crowd pleaser, due to his physically imposing presence on the field. He also was, when on song, a better kicker of set shots at goal than Buddy.    Folau was also a good target because Melburnians already knew Folau from his adventures for the Storm, which included spectacular AFL style marks.

The experiment was not, as Baum and other Victorians have asserted, a disaster.  Cordy’s view that the publicity gained by Folau was worth the money holds more water. What the AFL gained with Folau was a foothold in the football conversation in western Sydney.  As successful on the field as the Swans have been, they remain a peripheral team for most of the west.  Suddenly, there were the Giants, featuring on TVs and radios with people talking about them, talking about Folau.  Whenever there were public appearances, there were kids and parents, seeing Folau and the others.  Most kids and many staff at my school only knowing that GWS even existed due to the playing of Folau.  The aftermath of his departure will be interesting – but if for no other reason, the name and brand are out there in the community.   It’s still early days. In any case, Folau being at the club had, I suspect, minimal impact on actual crowd numbers through the year, which were fairly meagre.   If Sydney as a city is true to form, it wouldn’t be one player that will bring them to games. It will be once the Giants start winning more games.

What has been clear throughout the year is that there are many inside and outside AFL who want to see the Giants fail as a concept. There are fans of poorly performing Melbourne clubs who are jealous of the draft picks and money being spent in an area they see as a wasteland (I have heard so many disparaging references made in the last year to Blacktown made by people who have never been there – this is despite the fact the Giants play in Homebush and train in Rooty Hill). There are, surprisingly, Swans fans jealous of the money spent on the fostering of football in the west (we never got that when the Swans came up, they cry).  There are also those rugby league fans and writers who crow about the losses of the Giants and the poor performances of Folau – most notoriously, Roy Masters, whose loathing of AFL and the Giants have no depths – even to the extent of him declaring Breakfast Points and Homebush Bay are inner city suburbs.  Masters and others, including Matthew Johns,  claim the AFL are out to “destroy” rugby league with the Giants, which is as ludicrous as stating that when Carlton started selling VB in Sydney pubs, they were going to destroy Tooheys.  The bizarre propaganda that I have seen in the year is part of what appears to be the modern media’s self appointed role to tell people what to think, this time in sport.

That is why league’s cheerleaders like the Telegraph’s Phil Rothfield have belted the AFL, talking of the “war” that the NRL are now winning.   It’s just silly that the main anti GWS paper (which the exception of Cordy) is the Daily Telegraph, because it is in the same stable of the AFL centric Melbourne Herald Sun.  All confected, all pandering to how they want to shape audience reactions.  Roy Masters must be dancing around, waiting to construct another poorly written hatchet job on the AFL.  As ever, both Rothfield and Masters could take some notes from the best league writer at either Sydney paper, Brad Walter, whose piece frames the decision in the context of both games and cultures – with well chosen quotations from representatives of both codes.  One of the best insights from the Walter article is that “Fairfax was told that Folau did not want to stand in the way of good young players coming through the ranks at GWS”, which if true, supports a view that Folau is a decent young man who made a choice based on an honest self appraisal, which will result in him being happy, but perhaps less financially wealthy.

This is the central picture that seems to emerge about Folau, that he is a quiet, unassuming man who wants to do his best and be at his best in whatever he does. That, ultimately, seems to also provide a clue as to why he didn’t work in AFL. He ultimately didn’t have the passion and love for the game.  If he did, he could have worked harder at getting up to speed with the tactics and manoeuvres, as figures like Pyke and Karmichael Hunt is beginning to achieve. He could have been more assertive with insisting on being a ruckman and sticking at it. He was, after all, potentially a major star. This is why also why I personally, as a passionate believer in the Giants experiment, that he needed to go back to league. It wasn’t good for him as a person or for the club to have a player who clearly didn’t have the passion and nous.  It wouldn’t have been good for Folau’s pride that Andrew “Sauce” Phillips, the young Tasmanian backup ruckman for the Giants was developing faster than Folau.

It is also emerging that Folau seems more comfortable with the rugby league star player culture than the developing Giants culture.  It is not surprising that Folau went on holidays to the US with Eels stars Jarryd Hayne – he shares a Minto background with Hayne. He had little in common with his mostly teenage Giants teammates.   It would also be hard for a former superstar player like Folau to be just a cog at a large conglomeration that is an AFL team, where little contributions are necessary throughout.  He seems to someone more at ease with being a star player capable of brilliant moments that win games – hence the possibility of a return to that culture at the Parramatta Eels.

Few rugby league club cultures seem to encourage individualism and star building than Parramatta. With the exceptions of Luke Burt, Nathan Cayless, the Hindmarsh brothers and a few others, Parramatta is less a club of hard working grafters than a team of unknowns as well as a group of “stars” recruited and lionised by the club.  These players are feted by the media and people of Parramatta, in and outside the leagues club. Many of these stars, like Chris Sandow and Hayne himself, are often more remembered for their lack of consistency as they are for their positive contributions. They don’t seem to have the same gritty team ethos as a Manly, Canterbury, South Sydney or St. George under Wayne Bennett, where the individual is less important than the team unit.  This was evident especially with the removal of Daniel Anderson as coach – a fine coach who was unfairly treated due to the lack of effort from a group of underperforming stars. The consequent failure of Stephen Kearney at the club seem to underline this problem.

Ricky Stuart, who as Cronulla and NSW coach appeared to be as good as talking the talk as he was as a player, now seems to be continuing to accept this star ethos, paying complete focus on recruiting stars like Sonny Bill Williams or Folau, even to the startling extent of attending Hillsong church services in order to capture Folau.  I hope for the sake of Parramatta’s long suffering supporters (which included me before Anderson’s removal), Folau makes a positive difference to the team.  Certainly, he will arrive with greater endurance than he had before the sport science people at GWS worked on his body, reducing his bulk and improving his stamina.  Clubs don’t win premierships – usually – on the back of one consistently performing star, however. I hope for his sake Israel Folau doesn’t get to feel as frustrated with the Hayne Tangara at Parramatta as he would have been playing a game he didn’t quite get.

On the weekend, I was fortunate enough to be in Geelong to continue to follow the journey of the GWS Giants. It was great to see them put in a big effort to shut down the imposing Cats’ premiership winning central corridor play for the first half. It was like watching the Gold Coast Titan shutting down the halfback – five eighth – hooker combination of the Melbourne Storm, to use a rugby league analogy.

The main question I was asked in Geelong was why I followed AFL – and I gave my 1981 VFL v Rugby League TV coverage answer. Maybe I should have said that I didn’t like the teams produced by Roy Masters. I didn’t, though, because I don’t have a vendetta. That isn’t the case with the former coach, who, in his heyday, was responsible for ramping up the “Fibros v Silvertails” rivalry of the 1970s.

He seems determined to use the same caustic, vitriolic approach to the threat he perceives from AFL in the form of the Giants. Today’s article in the Herald continues that battle from the warhorse.

Lonesome Giants endangered in wild west

June 5, 2012

On a hiding to nothing … GWS star Israel Folau. Photo: Steve ChristoYes – the article starts with Israel Folau, the league convert who continues to develop his skills. To criticise the slow speed of that conversion in an easy target.

They are called Giants but the AFL’s newest team has more in common with the giant tortoise of the Galapagos Islands than the usual cast of super-size heroes.  

The Galapagos tortoise nicknamed ”Lonesome George” is considered by researchers to be the rarest creature on earth. The 90-year-old, two-metre high shell-back therefore qualifies as a protected species and deserving of even more care and comfort than that accorded other rare giants, such as the colossal squid and the giant tube worm.

And the point is…

But the AFL’s Greater Western Sydney Giants are an even more exotic beast, judging from the protection they receive from that vile enemy, the media.

Ah, there’s the metaphor.

Week after week, the opposition scores twice their number of points, yet the media describes these abysmal defeats as a ”giant effort”, ”brave performance” or ”gallant”.

Perhaps watching a Giants game might help Masters understand the difficulty of starting a new AFL team without a core group of seasoned players.  Maybe going back into the annals of the Penrith Panthers, who took 24 years to win a premiership. Perhaps Parramatta, who took 34. Or Cronulla.  All new clubs struggle for early positive results, except if you were the Brisbane Broncos. All that context is left out of this comment, revealing Masters’ agenda of criticising without context or understanding of the game about which he is writing.

Sure, the team is very young, consisting of the best draft choices in the nation and coached by a man, Kevin Sheedy, who is described in terms usually reserved for Albert Einstein.

Masters makes this comment without quotation – though, it does need to be said that Kevin Sheedy is often spoken about in positive terms. Possibly winning four premierships as a coach affords that kind of respect.

But when is someone going to point out the Giants’ efforts in remaining competitive until half-time is not good enough?

I would like to have seen Masters write about the Gold Coast Titans in 2007, demanding they win from the start. I don’t think he would have. In any case, it is a poor comparison, because the Titans had purchased star players like Scott Prince and Luke Bailey and had a more experienced team than the Giants or the Suns.

Just as Lonesome George’s ancestors liked to island hop, the Giants have abandoned their Blacktown base for Sydney Olympic Park. This received very little attention in the media, which is obviously responding to the Giants’ open-door policy.

“Open door policy” – it is not clear why Masters would object to a football team being open to the media when so many object to the closed door tactics of teams. It is a bad thing, apparently.  Here also we get the main nub of Masters’ vitriol – the playing to regional warfare.

To be fair, there are sensible reasons for their deserting Blacktown.  The modern footballer is, in his own way, a coddled creature. He likes all his training demands at the one location. Collingwood, Carlton, the Broncos, Storm and Titans have centres of excellence, where players can train, be massaged, watch videos, treat injuries, swim and answer pesky media inquiries in the one complex.

The GWS player in the pre-season was spending up to four hours travelling between venues for training and their luxury resort in the inner west.

Luxury resort. Breakfast Point is not a resort and nor is it in the “inner west” – but let’s not facts get in the way.  The reality was that the club has set up a close set of living facilities near their home ground – also preventing the situation where players can take off to nightclubs and perform various activities of which Masters may well approve.  In addition, the Blacktown venue was no available for training in summer months, due to the presence of Cricket NSW.

By relocating to Sydney Olympic Park as their base for training and playing, they are eight minutes’ drive to their Breakfast Point villas, and closer to their upper middle-class supporter base in the Hills district.

Again, Masters plays on class consciousness and lazy stereotyping for his point – that this isn’t “real” “Western Sydney” the club is representing.  This denies the reality of pockets of AFL supporters and clubs throughout the western, north western and south western suburbs – not to mention the Blue Mountains, where AFL has had a large presence for many years.

I am also guessing that current players for Parramatta, Penrith, Canterbury and the Wests Tigers aren’t living in fibro shacks in Lidcombe.  Some of them may even live in villas.

It makes these young, high draft choice players less vulnerable to being lured back to Melbourne at the end of this season.

There is more than just location that will be influencing the decisions – but looking into that would take some actual research.

It’s not known how much money has been spent preserving the habitat of the Galapagos giant tortoise but considerable taxpayers’ dollars have been devoted to the Giants.

The NSW government spent $15 million on developing the Blacktown precinct for a second AFL team and cricket. It also allocated $45 million for the upgrading of the Sydney Showground to make it suitable for Australian football.

Apparently, spending money on preserving tortoises is not something that adds to the greater good of the population in the Masters mindset. Neither does providing for community infrastructure like football grounds.  Governments spend a lot of money on different codes and sports.  There is the $8.4 million spent on the Canterbury Bulldogs’ training ground, Belmore, the $136 million provided to the Sydney Cricket Ground for an upgrade to their members’ sections, Penrith Stadium’s upgrade and so on. Not mentioned is that the Showground will continue to be used by the Royal Agricultural Society and will be good for a number of events, due to its proximity to trains and buses. The same can’t be said for Belmore or Penrith, which are not used for much else other than football. Facts, though, are as lonely as Masters’ tortoise in this article.

According to reports in July 2008, Blacktown council siphoned off its taxpayer-provided sports budget for the facility, described as a $27.5 million project.

The AFL and cricket provided $2,875,000 and with the NSW government tipping in $15 million, presumably Blacktown council provided the rest.

Presumably? Masters possibly should have got on the phone and find someone who would know how much they contributed.  This comment, though, is loaded with the implication that the money is now wasted – though cricket’s use of the facilities is just a peripheral fact that is swept away in Masters’ pursual of a one eyed agenda.

On the eve of the Giants’ first home game at the renamed Sydney Showground, Skoda Stadium, the federal government announced it would contribute $2 million to facilities at Sydney Olympic Park.

A press release from the Minister for Sport, Kate Lundy, announced the funds would be allocated to ”an elite-standard AFL training oval and community sports field”, while ”the AFL and the GWS Giants will build a multicultural community education centre (MCEC), which will feature a 75-person theatrette, dedicated classroom and community meeting rooms”.

Strange that Masters posts this without comment, Andrew Bolt style. He either finds nothing wrong with providing community facilities for people near Homebush, or he is wishing for people to pour scorn on the proposal. It is a strange way to compose an article.

The ACT government has also given the Giants $26 million over 10 years to play four games a year in Canberra, while Wagga Wagga council will pay $300,000 over three years for pre-season games.

Masters could have mentioned the money provided to NRL teams by cities that host various home games throughout the season as a way of balancing the money that is paid for such a right – but that would introduce objectivity here – a commodity more rare than Lonesome George.

The AFL insists they haven’t abandoned Blacktown, pointing out it will be used as a base for development where they claim to spend $4 million a year.

They will also play an additional televised pre-season game there, run their elite junior competitions plus train there for 12 sessions a year.

Again, posted without comment. Perhaps that’s because it sounds reasonable that the AFL will still use Blacktown in a way more appropriate for its size and access to transport – it is an excellent facility for those purposes and will continue to be long into the future.

Just as scientists are desperately searching the Galapagos Islands to find a mate for Lonesome George in order to perpetuate the species, the AFL’s plan in having two Sydney teams was to foster the code in Australia’s biggest city.

And we get back to Masters’ metaphor, now turned vicious – that the AFL is like an old, dying, desperate tortoise. It more shows the desperation of a bitter man seeing that AFL might have a future alongside the NRL in Sydney.

The Swans have access to the harbour and the city, something the people of Sydney’s west have been travelling to for 70 years.

Oh, really. Masters should listen to supporters of the descendants of his Wests Magpies – the Wests Tigers – bitterly complaining about the onerous journey to Moore Park, with its buses. Or others claiming that even Homebush “isn’t western Sydney” when referring to the Showground. The recent fan forums undertaken by backers of the new West Sydney soccer franchise have had the consensus view that Homebush is too far. So, the “harbour and the city” argument in relation to the Swans is woefully off the mark.

They won’t welcome the view the Giants had to leave Blacktown because the players were spending too much time in cars.

That is not the argument of the Giants. Perhaps reading the whole of the press release would have helped Masters.

Similarly, Lonesome George has rejected the Volcan Wolf tortoise and those other floozy tortoises marine scientists have paraded for him to reproduce with.

Floozy tortoises. Thanks for that.

The artificially created mating of the now inner west Giants with the Swans might have a similar fate, particularly in stimulating interest in Australian football in Sydney’s greater west, a region long taken for granted.

A region long taken for granted by whom? The AFL? NRL? The article doesn’t say, but it can be fair to say that the AFL is doing anything but taking it for granted – otherwise, why spend the money.  And it’s puzzling that Masters insists that the Swans and the Giants are “mating” – if anything, they are rapidly developing two different identities. As for the “inner west Giants” – that a pretty silly label from a man defending a competition where the “Wests Tigers” have home games in Leichhardt and Moore Park.

Roy Masters will continue his vendetta on every forum with which he is provided – such as Offsiders and the Herald, due in part to his own status as a respected former coach – pretty akin to Sheedy. The difference is, though, is that we won’t see Sheedy write a vicious attack on the Melbourne Storm or the NRL in general. That’s because first of all there doesn’t seem to be a single AFL writer who hates league in the same way Masters hates AFL. In addition, the AFL don’t seem to feel threat from the NRL.  Masters, however, loathes a future that will see people choose either NRL or AFL for their children for reasons that aren’t really that apparent, other than an irrational hatred.

Masters himself is a bit of endangered species – the Old Grizzled Anti AFL Leaguie. The species, as represented by Masters, is not really like a Galapagos Tortoise, it is more like a Tasmanian Devil, increasingly isolated and snarling at passers by.

The events of the last two years have made surprising stars in the community. One is Bob Katter – his fame and the red hued agrarian socialist party he has formed due to that fame is still my favourite outcome of the 2010 election. The other is miner and prominent LNP supporter, Clive Palmer.  Like fellow miners Tony Sage, Nathan Tinkler and Roman Abramovich, he has a hobby – a football team.  Gold Coast United has had an unhappy time, however, with tiny attendance records and poor performances through its history. Palmer himself has threatened to stop backing the Gold Coast team and has performed curious actions like restricting the attendance at the club’s Robina Stadium in order to save money.

Now, however, the relationship between Palmer and the ruling body of soccer in Australian, the FFA, has gone down a bizarre path, with Palmer objecting to how football is run by the FFA, the money paid to executives and the wasteful World Cup bid. He also interfered with the running of the Gold Coast club, by appointing a 17 year old as captain, sacking a coach who was less than delighted at that move. Finally, as a bold act of defiance to the FFA, the team wore these shirts – claimed later to be about refugees:

As a result of this action, in addition to others, we have had the head of the FFA, fellow billionaire Frank Lowy declare that the Gold Coast have found themselves stripped of a licence to play. As a result, Palmer wants to head to the courts.  However, not without first starting his own new organisation to “oversee” football in Australia – creatively named “Football Australia”. It does make me wonder if, one day he isn’t happy with the Liberal Party, he’d be inclined to start his own party.

Here is part of the press conference held by Palmer to announce the new competition. It was a vintage Palmer appearance, featuring a cheeky, trolling comparison between his new body and the work done by the “excellent” Lowy Institute in political affairs ; reference to his registering of the name with ASIC, the slogan “We Kick Harder” and a couple of mentions of a new logo. The important things.  Though, he did bring up one element of Australian soccer that does go shamefully under promoted – women’s soccer.  I’m not sure when Palmer became a champion for women’s rights, but there he was today.

It’s a pity, though, he didn’t announce a new competition, replete with new clubs, with names like: Karratha Rineharts, Darwin Woodsides, Adelaide Santos, Sydney Strike Breakers, Western Sydney No Carbon Taxes, Mt Isa Katters, Illawarra Steelers, Nunanwading Nuclear and the Canberra Coalitions.  It’s also a pity he didn’t call Frank Lowy or Ben Buckley “chickens” – otherwise, we could have had the headline Chicken Palmer Drama.

The big shame of this incident is that people should be looking at how the FFA is running Australian soccer, especially the salaries of officials, the promotion of the game, the disappearance of the game from free to air TV, as well as poor attendances. I was at an A League game in Sydney recently, which was of pretty high quality, but only with 10,000 fans in attendance – basically only a few more than a recent Giants game in Blacktown. It is a serious issue that needs addressing.  Palmer is also right in saying that there should also be a greater spotlight on women’s soccer. As a result, I do suggest this video as a rallying call for Football Australia’s campaign to unite all soccer fans under one banner.

And for mobiles, this one:

Those familiar with my tweets and earlier blog posts will know of my enthusiasm for the Greater Western Sydney enterprise – a western Sydney team for the football I prefer.  It was great to go to the Blacktown Sportspark to see them do very creditably against the Western Bulldogs and Collingwood. The crowd was very different from those I have experienced at Swans games – apart from a bigger chunk of working class people, there seemed to be a lot of expatriates from other states in their team colours or have adopted the old AFL cries – especially when Collingwood was being headed.

In addition, my kids have fully bought into the Giants fun – they love the song. As do I. This extended version shows how much Harry Angus from The Cat Empire enjoyed writing the song and its instrumental solo.

The media coverage I have seen about the Giants, however, has not inspired confidence that a new, enthusiastic supporter like me, my kids or those around us matters much in the way this team will be covered. Already, it’s all about TV ratings numbers and crowds, as reported here by Sydney Morning Herald league writer, Brad Walter. He, along with AFL media people, is reporting mostly TV watching numbers and crowd comparisons.

Problem is with comparing the crowd numbers – indeed using the word “dwarfed” between the NAB Cup and Charity Shield games is one of stadiums.  The Blacktown Sportspark only fits 10,000. It’s a suburban hill ground with a moderate grandstand – one to which tickets were not being sold.  The ANZ Stadium figures for the Charity Shield aren’t that good – 1/4 full – for a game featuring two teams with large supporter bases, Souths and St. George Illawarra.

All in all, it doesn’t bode well for the way the game will be covered.  It is natural that crowd wise, GWS will have a lean first year. They are a brand new club who might win one or two games.  Yet we will hear all about crowd and TV numbers from the NRL, who clearly feel threatened.  Proof of this can be found in the Walter article, where reference is made to the NRL putting up “giant billboards on the motorway to Sydney’s west and near the airport that will make it clear this is a league town” as being evidence of league’s supremacy. I would have thought that if people from other places were to judge Sydney by its billboards, they would think we were a city full of men who can’t “get it up” and need some nasal spray.  I can understand the strategy of selling rugby league to people stuck on Sydney’s motorways – but saying it’s a response to the “threat” of AFL is stretching the significance a little too far. League crowd numbers for the next few years won’t be threatened by AFL in anywhere near the capacity written about by the likes of Roy Masters and Walter.  League is still No. 1 in the west and will continue that position for many years.

If it wasn’t enough to get reasoned treatment from league writers, then there is the SMH’s resident funnyman, Richard Hinds, who wrote this snarky piece about the Giants. He basically writes in a bitter tone about the way the Giants have been set up, as well as throwing in the predictable jokes about acts who perform at Rooty Hill RSL. Hilarious. We have never heard those before.   I can’t really say anything else about the quality of the piece, because there is nothing to say in that regard.  Hinds seems to have some scores to settle with the AFL Commission and is using criticism of the Giants to carry that bitterness. If this is setting the tone, I can’t really see much analysis of any meaning from Hinds during this season.

As with the field full of derp that is in the way Federal Politics is reported, I can predict the Giants won’t get much better. I personally am looking forward to the games and atmosphere of the new members. That will be enough for me.