AFLM

Lions to roar or Magpies to soar? It's a remarkable revival story either way on grand final day

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, September 28, 2023
MCG, McGuire family, Brisbane Bears, Club, Gold Coast, Swan, Culture, Brownlow Medal, 2003 AFL Grand Final, Lion, Melbourne Cricket Ground, Carrara Stadium, AFLM, Fitzroy, Brisbane Lions, Bear, COVID, Black, McRae, Gold, First Nations, Racism, AFL, Pie, Magpie, Cassette tape, Entertainment, Sport, Nightclub, Hunting, Hotel, Nursing, Video game

Hopefully, unlike last year’s final, it will be a gripping match.

Key Points: 
  • Hopefully, unlike last year’s final, it will be a gripping match.
  • Perhaps most importantly, after lean years during COVID, there has also been bountiful spectator interest this season.
  • All this follows a bumper season for the AFL, with 36,110 attendees per game, the league’s highest average since 2010.

Rivals with September history

    • No other two clubs have faced each other more in an AFL grand final.
    • The Magpies lost to the Lions in 2002 and 2003, so they will be especially keen to soar against their Queensland rivals.
    • As with last week’s preliminary final, Collingwood will have the advantage of playing in Melbourne against an interstate rival.

The Lions are reborn

    • In 1996, the Brisbane Bears were reinvented as the Brisbane Lions following an AFL-managed merger with the financially distraught Fitzroy Lions.
    • A move from the Gold Coast’s Carrara Stadium to Brisbane’s Gabba embedded the newly branded Lions in Queensland’s capital.
    • That said, after the heady three-peat of 2000-3, the Lions endured some very lean years, making the finals only once between 2005 and 2018.
    • That year, the Lions were eliminated in the preliminary final, so it was a metaphorical opportunity lost.

Collingwood’s transformation

    • But sport is not simply about winning or losing; it’s also about how you play the game – both on and off the field.
    • In that respect, Collingwood is undergoing a renaissance that could not have been imagined just two years ago.
    • This led to the 2021 release of the “Do Better” report, which found evidence of systemic racism at the club.
    • Read more:
      As the 2022 AFLM season comes to a close, the game must ask itself some difficult questions – especially on racism

The antithesis of healing: the AFL turns away from truth-telling again, ending Hawthorn investigation

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, June 1, 2023
AFL Players Association, Theft, Pregnancy, Violence, AFLW, Culture, AFLM, Woman, Aboriginal deaths in custody, Attention, CEO, Human voice, Parliament, Australian Human Rights Commission, Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Death, Douglas Nicholls, Royal commission, Association, Love, Island, Stolen Generations, ABC, English Football League, Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Racism, Australian Football League, Indigenous peoples, AFL, News, Skin, Whaling, Entertainment, Aborigine, Indigenous, Burt, Hawthorn

The Indigenous-led ceremony was a deeply moving instance of community care, love and solidarity.

Key Points: 
  • The Indigenous-led ceremony was a deeply moving instance of community care, love and solidarity.
  • Tuesday’s announcement by the AFL of the termination of the investigation into allegations of racism at Hawthorn was the antithesis of such healing.
  • The AFL has also hinted it may charge Hawthorn with bringing the game into disrepute over its handling of the internal report.

Sorry timing

    • It’s hard not to be cynical about the release of this news after the conclusion of the Sir Doug Nicholls “Indigenous round”, and Sorry Day.
    • If the allegations are true, it could be argued the Hawthorn officials who were involved thought they were acting in the “best interests” of the players.
    • How could the AFL not wish to find out the truth of the matter when the allegations concern such egregious conduct?
    • Outgoing AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan also claimed that the defendants had been “cleared” and the complainants “feel heard”.

(Not) listening to Indigenous voices

    • Yet, in electing to set up its own investigation into the allegations of racism at Hawthorn, the AFL was clearly going against the voices of key Indigenous women at the centre of these allegations.
    • The erasure of Indigenous women’s voices and experiences is also emblematic of life on this continent.
    • Indigenous women in Australia are eight times more likely to be murdered than non-Indigenous women, yet the violence they experience receives far less attention.

Truth-telling

    • What’s clearly needed is for the AFL to engage in a full process of truth-telling.
    • The AFL Players Association is the most recent group to note that the AFL’s investigation into Hawthorn was “not truly independent”.
    • Incoming AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon has proclaimed he is not part of a (white) boys club.