Red Wine Express

I recently read an article in GQ magazine called “10 Wankers You Only See at the AFL”. They are, in order:
1. Eddie Maguire – if you’re Australian you know who this bloke is. If you’re not, don’t fret.
2. The bloke who immediately shouts ”baaalll” when an opposition player gets possession. This is like a rugby fan demanding a rugby player be penalised for not releasing the ball immediately he is touched by an opposition defender.
3. People who slag off at the huge banners the players run through at the start of a game. More on this later.
4. The up close and personal slagger – the bloke (or shiela) who’s hanging over the boundary fence screaming abuse at the nearest opposition player. More on this later also.
5. The branded stadium fan. Not sure whether the author of the piece is complaining about the fan who refers to the stadium as Drinky Cola Stadium or its old pre-branding name of Ponce Park.
6. The dodgy runner – this is the bloke who relays water and messages to the players during play and gets in the way. Easily fixed – ban it. Can you imagine trainers all over the field during a Manchester derby.
7. The light beer cry baby – they sit in the licensed area in the middle of a row and annoy the shit out of twenty people every 15 minutes when they have to squeeze past to get another beer. Not sure what the reference to light beer is though.
8. The box bastard is the bloke who gets to sit in a box because of connections and pretty much ignores the game.
That’s the end of the list. Now the most attentive of you will have noticed a minor inconsistency between the title of the piece and the content, specifically the number of separate bits that make up the content. That’s it – there are supposed to be 10 but the author could only think of 8. I guess he rounded it up. Or the GQ editor was asleep.
This is symptomatic of the massive susceptibility AFL has to the traditional Aussie piss-take. And I am not about to pass up this opportunity to take one.
Starting with banner-man (wanker number 3), there are many AFL people who spend every night of the working week either watching their team train (the ones that still train at night – old traditions die hard) or constructing massive crepe paper banners with stupid messages on them. They hold it up for about 10 seconds, the team runs though it and shreds the bottom couple of feet, it is then taken down and discarded. A week’s work gone in the blink of an eye. The term “get a life” was coined specifically for these people. Confession – I am banner-slagger-man.
The up close and personal slagger (wanker number 4) is a close relative of banner-man but spends his week watching re-runs of the last time his team won anything. This guy knows who won left half back flanker of the year for Collingwood in 1935. On match day he gets a skin-full and screams abuse at opposition players and umpires alike. He paid his taxes (when he worked a few years ago) so it’s his right, right? A certain well known cricketer would have evolved into this bloke if he hadn’t genetically stumbled on a dynamite right arm.
Now let’s look at this “game” more generally.
They refer to the dressing sheds as “rooms” as in “Lanky Longfellow must be really hurt because they’ve taken him into the rooms”. I have “rooms” in my house and there is not an AFL person anywhere to be seen.
They refer to teams as “playing groups”. That’s what we take our kids to when they are too young for school. They are TEAMS and collectively the TEAMS make up the club.
They refer to captains, vice captains and senior players as the “leadership group”. They also have multiple captains and vice captains and I think “senior player” is a title you can bestow upon yourself because there is no hard and fast definition. No, each TEAM has a CAPTAIN and a VICE CAPTAIN, that way there is no confusion as to who is responsible for running the play during the game if we can get that runner (wanker number 6) off the field for good.
The “F” in AFL stands for “Football”, not what you think I think it stands for. Listen to an AFL person talk and you will think it stands for “Footy”. I think there’s a competition amongst AFL types to see who can lever this word into a conversation the most times. So the ball is a footy, the game is footy, the players play footy, the spectators watch and worship footy, the hacks write about footy, footy is all over the news. In fact it is the only news in Melbourne where they learned about 9-11 in October because it happened during the footy finals.
Have you noticed how whenever a player has a milestone to celebrate or is retiring, they always run out carrying and/or leading a tribe of little kids? This has absolutely no relevance to the proceedings other than for the player to demonstrate to the world that not only can he play “footy” but he is a real man because here is the proof that he has sex……. with women.
After the game the players and assorted hangers on link arms in a circle and all sing “I’m a Lumberjack and I’m Okay” which I believe is the team (not the playing group) song for all of the clubs.
And last but not least, the AFL is the vanguard social justice warrior organisation in the country. The AFL is an organisation just like Qantas and the ABC and the Australian Workers Union are organisations. Organisations are defined by a few pieces of paper with articles of association written on them and maybe a certificate from ASIC. But apparently if the boss of the AFL says the AFL supports gay marriage or an ABC journalist says the ABC supports climate change then everyone at the organisation is tarred with that brush. This is bullshit not least because organisations as such, don’t have brains.
Extending this theme in respect of the AFL, every weekend there is a cause to promote. So we have the Multicultural round, we have the Indigenous round, we have the Women’s round we have the AFL executives shouldn’t have sex with adult women who also work for the AFL round. The actual “footy” is being crowded out by social engineering. But I’ll give the virtue signallers at AFL House a piece of advice for free. Up close and personal slagger (wanker number 4), who makes up at least 50% of your fan base, doesn’t give a shit.