5 hours Ago By Sumo
You frost-free fellas from Fawkner to Frankston don’t know football like we do. We play in the snow and dodge trees in the middle of the outer wing. We do it harder, and tougher.
It’s what we do. We have the highest number of AFL players per head of population. Country Victoria is the heartland of AFL, yet we’ve been forgotten by the folk who fraternise between Fisherman’s Bend and Flinders Street, and we have just one team for the south-west: Geelong.
If you’re thinking that Melbourne is the foundation of the AFL, I dare you to say that in Rundle Mall, or St George’s Terrace. For it’s far more far-flung than just one city. Footy is, or was, a representative sport.
Originally it was tribal in Melbourne—there was the working-class Collingwood taking it up to the affluent Carlton. Fast forward fourteen decades, and those suburbs are far from footy heartland. If you frolic east on foot from Flemington Road, you’ll pass through four or five footy team locales in fifty-five minutes without finding a footy fan.
Just flashy folk in fancy flats; fellas with fifties haircuts and foot-long beards; and females with fake tans and four layers of foundation covering fissures like fondant—all riding their fixies with frothy fair-trade frappuccinos in fingerless gloves. Tom De Koning marks in front of Sam De Koning. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images) There was no Victoria in the VFL.
There were only bayside teams who fought for the flag. We fed your ‘V’ FL with more AFL inducted legends than each of the other states, and you still fleece our countryside of kids—like a parasite, ferociously feeding on the farmland fledglings. Melbourne is central to the state, but it is a world away for us.
It is more like other state or international capitals than Country Victoria. Free agency sees players move back home after being drafted to a club that is four or five hours away (by Ford Falcon and a flight), but our players will remain four or five hours away (by Falcon) from their home for their entire career. More AFL You flippantly flirt with fantasies of re-forming State of Origin, but we already have pseudo state teams everywhere, except Victoria.
Juniors can play for Vic Country, or Vic Metro, but that’s where it starts and finishes. Victorian clubs are merely brands without geographic representation, and the weaker brands struggle. Some relocated or changed their name while Fitzroy moved to St Kilda, Footscray, and Carlton, before flying fourteen hundred kilometres to find a future.
Footscray’s name change picked up on the need for a geographic base and with games in Ballarat, they give us someone to follow. North should do the same. You don’t have to be a financial figure fabricator to foresee their future.
With a rural mascot and the same theme song as the ‘Big V’, it’s a no-brainer. Imagine the rivalries formed when the Victoria Kangaroos (or my favourite, the Kilmore Kangaroos) strut onto the Adelaide Oval in their royal blue guernseys with a big white V glistening to remind the Croweaters that their nemesis remains alive. Paul Curtis and Jy Simpkin celebrate North Melbourne win.
(Photo by Daniel Carson/AFL Photos via Getty Images) The Demons have been fortunate to field a name that covers the entire city, but still have no fans. If only they’d stop faffing around and live up to the name or revert to the Fuchsias. They have competition from Tassie and may find Mephistopheles switching teams.
There’s already a red V on the jumper, and it won’t be a Steven Stretch to also use the ‘Big V’ and represent the whole metro area. It’ll stir up the tiresome Croweaters with their lame ‘Kick a Vic’ slogan and foster a fight with the Country Kangaroos. Either make that change or be frank and swap the ‘Mel’ for ‘Cran’ and represent Gippsland.
Finally, forget the false representations of the old footy suburbs and find us footy teams to fly the flag for the farming fraternity from Port Fairy to Falls Creek and Red Cliffs to Foster. Geelong has flourished, so for the future of footy, fight for fairness you feeble-minded, fair-weather fat cats..
