I wouldn’t.
Ch7 was down to 4 FTA games per week last year now it’s 3 games per week.
Plus a VFL game.
Seven where always AT 4 games a week, no more.
As part of the latest rights deal, they agreed to less games, but still have 4 a week for a number of weeks.
Won’t happen. FTA will have to cease to exist before it does.
‘Flog man’ threatens to take AFL to court
Alistair Paton
A Carlton fan who was thrown out of Marvel Stadium for abusing an umpire has threatened to sue AFL boss Gillon McLachlan.
In a remarkable escalation of supporter backlash at the league, the fan accused McLachlan of defaming him during his weekly radio appearance on 3AW.
The league CEO said that while the AFL decided to take no further action against the man, it found he had been removed from the ground last Saturday after he “ran across two bays” to hurl abuse at umpire Mathew Nicholls.
“Mathew Nicholls is a very experienced umpire, I got the note for that and I followed it up, he said it was the most intimidated he’s felt in his hundreds of games of football,” McLachlan said.
The fan, who calls himself Frankie, phoned the radio station after McLachlan’s interview and acknowledged calling Nicholls a “bald-headed flog”, but said the AFL had “thrown me under a bus”.
“Where’s the footage of me running across two bays? I want to see that,” he said.
"They own the ground. Surely they can get in contact with security, let’s see the footage.
“That’s a load of crap … we’ve all had enough.”
‘Frankie’ said he was happy to produce his ticket that showed his seat was at the top of the umpires’ race.
"I was standing at my seat and I haven’t moved for the whole day.
“If my hand in my pocket and the other hand holding a radio is intimidating, we’ve got a few issues in society.”
McLachlan said the fan – who says he is “still waiting on my official warning” – was removed for “the whole environment”, not his “bald-headed flog” taunt.
The AFL boss said fans were still allowed to boo umpires and yell insults that weren’t “intimidatory”, but he couldn’t define where that line was.
"Booing has been part of our game for 100 years … people boo the umpires all the time.
"I can’t prescribe for you respectful behaviour, what words are and aren’t (acceptable) … the fans decide in the end.
“Everyone should feel comfortable at the football … there’s been no change in policy, I want to be clear that they should go and express themselves at the game, but it has to be respectful, and that’s the way it’s always been.”
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Let see how Teflon Gill handles this. I would love these lies to come back to bite him.
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stating the obvious - The AFL are doing a massively crap job with their PR and messaging this year.
One stupid public utterance after the next - all to protect the brand. Except the more they talk the worse is gets for them.
Hope someone can hold them accountable. It won’t come from within as they’ll be biting the hands that feeds it. But a public supporter who is not a part of their network will enjoy giving it to them.
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“How are we gonna get out of here?” – Otto
“We’ll dig our way out!” – Homer Simpson
“No, no, dig up, stupid.” – Chief Wiggum
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Who is next in line for the Ceo job?
Is it Brendan Gale?
McLachlan is a PR disaster.
Every time he opens his mouth he makes things worse.
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Wouldn’t surprise me if the flog vs poof supposed comment was AFL spin also
AFL’s position on Indigenous history of Aussie Rules leaves game’s historians baffled
By national sport editor David Mark
about 5 hours ago
Updated
The AFL has adopted a new position on the origins of Australian football, now claiming it was influenced by Indigenous games.
Key points:
- The AFL has recognised Indigenous game Marngrook as an “undoubted influence” on Australian Rules football
- Historians of the game have disputed the AFL’s latest stance, suggesting there is no evidence to prove the link
- The AFL says the sharing of oral history by Aboriginal elders confirms the Indigenous connection to Australian Rules
The change was spelt out in the AFL’s recent apology to Indigenous footballer Adam Goodes.
The statement, attributed to the AFL’s general manager of social policy and inclusion Tanya Hosch, said: “Aboriginal history tells us that traditional forms of football were played by Australia’s first peoples all over Australia, most notably in the form of Marngrook. It is Australia’s only Indigenous football game — a game born from the ancient traditions of our country.”
The ABC asked Ms Hosch for an interview to clarify whether the AFL believed there was an explicit link between the Indigenous football games, and the sport codified by Tom Wills and others in Melbourne in 1859.
She declined the interview request, but in a statement said: “Marngrook, a high-marking game played in Victoria’s western districts, pre-European settlement, undoubtedly influenced what we now understand as the modern AFL football code.”
“It is a statement that acknowledges the Aboriginal history of our game. We believed it was important to recognise the Aboriginal origins of the game in this statement.”
The AFL’s new position is in direct contrast to the previous statements of the sport’s origins.
In 2008 — as part of Australian Rules football’s 150th anniversary celebration — the AFL commissioned the historian, Gillian Hibbins, to write an essay on Australian football’s origins in which she said the idea that Australian Rules football originated from Aboriginal games was “a seductive myth”.
“I can’t say when the position changed, however there was no push-back regarding the recognition of the link between the modern game of AFL and the Marngrook game in the process of developing the joint statement,” Ms Hosch said in another statement.
"We are aware of this part of the game’s history being contested and at some stage I hope the AFL will formally resolve this but as it stands, we now have a statement that acknowledges and accepts the link between Marngrook and Australian Rules Football.
"This gives us a good step forward in terms of acknowledgment in future historical records of the game.
“It’s worth noting that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s history, perspectives and beliefs have always been and will always be contested or undermined by some people. There is nothing new about that.”
Asked on what evidence the position changed, Ms Hosch said the sharing of oral history by Aboriginal elders had changed the understanding of Marngrook within the AFL industry.
In another piece in the 2008 AFL 150 years publication, dual Brownlow Medallist Adam Goodes wrote: “I know that when Aborigines play Australian Football with a clear mind and total focus, we are born to play it.”
Is the AFL changing history?
The AFL’s new position has baffled some of the game’s historians.
Roy Hay has just published a book entitled Aboriginal People and Australian Football in the Nineteenth Century, which examines the idea that Australian football was influenced by games played by Aborigines.
Of the AFL’s new position on the origins of the game, Mr Hay said, “That just simply is an attempt to rewrite history.”
Mr Hay and other historians of the game say there is no doubt that Aboriginal people played many different forms of football, but many argue there is no evidence that Australian Rules Football was influenced by those games.
“The idea that [Indigenous football] was somehow a blueprint for the game that the white men developed in Melbourne around the late 1850s — I have searched high and low, and many other historians have done [the same], to find out if there is substantial evidence that supports that, and really we can find none.”
Another football historian, Dr Greg de Moore, has been unable to find any link between the Aboriginal games and the one codified in the late 1850s, in more than 10 years of research.
Dr de Moore co-authored a landmark history of the sport Australian Football, A National Game, and is the biographer of the sport’s most important founding father, Tom Wills.
“There is an evidence gap … I’ve seen nothing in recent years to change my view,” Dr de Moore said.
The claim that Australian Rules has its origins in Aboriginal games is largely based on Wills’ childhood in country Victoria, before he was sent to Rugby School in England for seven years.
From the age of around four to 14, Wills lived in the Grampians and made friends with the local Djab Wurrung people.
“He knew these people very well. He was befriended by them. They felt very warmly towards him,” Dr de Moore said.
But did Wills ever play football with them? And, if so, did that influence the sport he later helped create?
“I’ve found nothing that documented that he saw the game. He never made reference to it, and no one ever else made reference to it,” de Moore said.
The British rules
Supporters of the Marngrook origin story often point to the visual similarities the Indigenous game shared with Australian football — particularly the high mark.
But Mr Hay and Dr de Moore argue that Wills and his contemporaries borrowed exclusively from the English school games of the time when they wrote the first 10 laws of what was then known as the Rules of the Melbourne Football Club.
“The things that he wanted to introduce into the game derived from his background at Rugby School in England and the sorts of games that people were playing in the public schools,” Mr Hay said.
Mr Hay said the football of the sport’s early decades was a low, scrimmaging rugby-style game, that would be unrecognisable to modern observers.
As to the possible Aboriginal origins of the game: “I wish it were true, I really wish it were true, but I can’t find any evidence that supports that,” he said.
The central tenet of Hay’s book is that Aboriginal people were playing Australian Rules Football, almost from its inception in the late 1850s.
“What I found is that the Indigenous people who were left after the massacres and the invasion and the disease and the ethnic cleansing — if you really want to go about it — the survivors who were left in the missions and stations around the periphery of Victoria, saw the white men playing their game and forced their way into it, first of all as individuals, then forming teams and eventually becoming good enough to win local leagues,” he said.
Mr Hay added that the AFL’s apology to Goodes was “the cleverest piece of image management I’ve come across in a long time from the archetypical and best of the image managers: the AFL”.
In response, Ms Hosch said “all 18 clubs signed the statement. This is one of the strongest statements ever made by a sporting code concerning racism in our game and the history of our nation more broadly”.
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Haha this quote is so funny!! What a whack to the AFL.
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Missed this one. The AFL is now getting into the food and beverage market. 
Hope the tax man is watching.
AFL announces partnership with Emirates Leisure Retail that combines Australians’ love for travel and footy with the all new AFL Kitchen & Bar
Footy pricing x airport pricing
$7000 for a pie?
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I’m all for the romanticism of marngrook’s influence over Australian rules football but extremely cynical about this very sudden reversal of their previously staunchly held position. So conveniently timed too. That can just go fark themselves, the lot of them.
This also cracked me up "“I can’t say when the position changed, however there was no push-back regarding the recognition of the link between the modern game of AFL and the Marngrook game in the process of developing the joint statement,”
Oh I think you can say it’s just embarrassing to do so because this is about as brazen attempt at massaging a bad news cycle with racial connotations as they come.
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How far do you think a normal punter could get against the AwFL and their battalions of lawyers?
It takes more than money to take them on - it takes an enormous amount of courage to stand up to their threats and bullying.
Even then they find a way to win - look at what happened to Jackson Taylor.
“Franky” does not stand a chance of even getting to court.
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Titus O’Reily: What the AFL really meant to say on crowd behaviour
Titus O’Reily knows what the AFL really meant to say on fan behaviour.
The AFL has concluded its investigationinto an incident involving an umpire and a patron at the match between Carlton and Brisbane.
And yes, we too were surprised there was a fan at this game.
The patron was spoken to by both Marvel Stadium security and Victoria Police.
During the discussion, the Carlton fan started making a lot of good points as to how bad the umpiring was, including a powerful argument about how the AFL’s constant rule tinkering had made the game we all love a “■■■■■■ nightmare”.
His views on the “protected zone” were particularly compelling.
So convincing was the man, police seriously considered arresting the umpires, with an AFL official having to step in.
Eventually, the Carlton fan was instead evicted from the ground, missing out on seeing a Blues victory.
Umpire Mathew Nicholls took issue with being called a bald headed flog. Picture: Michael Klein
The AFL considers this a punishment on the same scale as a Hawthorn supporter being kicked out of a Grand Final win, so there will be no further punishment.
At our venues we want to create a safe and fun environment for all fans so they can enjoy the football in the most expensive manner possible. Every Australian has a right to purchase a cold burger for $17.50.
For more than 100 years, the footy has been a place to come together, barrack, cheer and try to understand what happened to incorrect disposal.
I mean, it was a thing once and now it’s just ignored and we know it drives you fans crazy, which is basically why we do it.
In 2019 there has been no change to the expectations of the behaviour of everyone at games. The AFL has just discovered how much fun it is to randomly throw people out. I mean, did you really expect consistency from us?
While barracking and supporting is strongly encouraged and a vital part of the game, offensive or aggressive behaviour will not be tolerated, unless it’s directed at Adam Goodes.
Then we will do nothing, until not one, but two documentaries are made, shaming us into issuing a media release late on a Friday before a long weekend.
This is for crowd behaviour of course — if you’re on radio or TV, you’ll be fine. You can say almost anything and we’ll do absolutely nothing about it.
Picture: The roof debate rages on at Marvel Stadium: Picture Getty
The Debate: Should the roof at Marvel Stadium be permanently closed for footy?
Pro
• Closing the roof will help you forget you’re in Docklands.
• Will correct an error where the builders of the stadium forgot the sun existed.
• Make us all hope we’re one step closer to closing the whole thing.
Con
• Given the teams that play home games at Marvel, being blinded by the sun is a blessing
• The ongoing debate over whether the roof should be open or not is the only interesting thing about Marvel Stadium.
• A common sense approach like this goes against the very fabric of the AFL.
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That is true Albert. And maybe wishful thinking on my part. But “Franky”'s actions may allow a suitable amount of egg to hit AFL faces. Or at least make people realise there are issues with the organisation. When people start laughing at you (for the wrong reasons) then you are getting into trouble and losing credibility. But then again, the AFL could just as easily announce a free-entry and free food round to show how wonderful they really are to reset the clock.
what a crock of an organisation
I like the bit where they say the high mark convinced them that the Tom Wills game and Marngrook were the same.
Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t the high mark unknown until Charlie Pearson started it in the 1880’s or later?
Pretty sure I remember seeing Charlie take that first mark.
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If you have to ask…
the AFL are now doing business in china.
Who’s teaching who?
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