Of all the confected AFL attempts to create “event games” none is more nakedly transparent and thus treated with derision verging on contempt by fans than the so-called rivalry round.
Carlton and Collingwood supporters do not need to be told that their clubs do not like one another and have a historical enmity stretching across two milennia and three centuries. And yet paradoxically, and exposing the flaw in the whole concept, often teams drawn to play in a rivalry round wonder when exactly their elemental and multi-generational dislike of the opposition came into being.
Football rivalries are like their real life equivalent: they can’t be created on the whim of a third party. And yet there is more to a rivalry, or long standing hatred be it between footy clubs or whole nations, tribes and ethnic groups, than merely “us and them”.
Rivalries may ebb and flow in their intensity, or even fall by the wayside as time passes and circumstances change. Take the French and Germans for example, no love lost between the giants of continental Europe, two nations that killed millions of each other’s citizens in the two largest wars in human history in the 20th century. But Paris and Berlin now happily cooperate at the highest political and military levels via the European Union to the point where other nations, who had joined the EU on the basis of its promise of a continent-wide partnership of equals, quite rightly complain that the Franco/German alliance rules all before it. Eerily reminiscent of the current AFL quasi-socialist structure where the stronger clubs, even those with long standing rivalries like the Victorian Big Four present a united front to protect their own interests, often at the expense of the smaller and less powerful clubs.
And rivalries can spring up seemingly from nowhere. Ever since the 2008 Grand Final contests between Geelong and Hawthorn have been played out at a white hot intensity, both on and off the field, to the point where the AFL has “formalised” this 21st century rivalry with its own exclusive annual Easter Monday blockbuster. On the international front, while the shooting was relatively brief in the 1982 Falklands War, the UK and Argentina retain a deep seated mutual suspicion as a result, one that politicians and especially the media regularly embrace. Very few people in 2004 would have predicted that Geelong and Hawthorn would develop a rivalry that would be seen as one of the biggest in the game a decade later, much as the idea in 1971 of a real life war between Britain and Argentina, with submarines sinking battleships and all, would come to pass would have been wildly remote.
Other rivalries are of more importance to one participant than the other. Take North Melbourne and Essendon. The Kangaroos fans make no secret of their intense dislike for the Bombers but find that not all their objects of hatred share the animosity. Indeed many Essendon supporters identify Collingwood, and especially the Anzac day match, as their greatest rivalry and dismiss North claims of a shared hatred – “Its just another game for me”.
This situation is redolent of the relationship between Ireland and the UK. North Melbourne supporters harken back to ancient injustices meted out by their larger and more powerful neighbour – the footy equivalent of the Potato Famine if you will – while many modern Essendon supporters are genuinely unaware of their club’s role in these events (Essendon stole all North’s players as a condition of the Arden Street side being permitted into the VFL in 1925, thus condemning North to decades as cellar dwellers according to those who still nurse the grudge) and certainly don’t feel that something that took place so long ago should have any bearing on how the clubs interact nearly a century later. Interestingly, and mirroring the situation in modern Ireland, many younger North supporters are also largely unconcerned by history that did not directly affect them, in the same way that splinter republican dissident groups still willing to use violence in the name of a “united Ireland” attract very little support in 21st century Dublin or Cork.
Geography is a natural driver of a true rivalry. Even though West Coast and Fremantle, and Adelaide and Port Adelaide (in their AFL incarnation) are comparatively new on the scene, the Western Derby and the Showdown are examples of a rivalry that will never end nor fall away in intensity. Here we look to India and Pakistan for a geopolitical equivalent: the hatred has existed for a great deal longer than the lines on the map, or names attached to those areas of the Earth’s surface, have been in use.
Of the newest entrants to the AFL, the Gold Coast Suns have yet to establish a recognised rivalry with any other side, though one senses Richmond will forever dislike “the AFL’s golden child, handed to them on a plate, where were they when Jack Dyer and Mopsy Fraser struck fear into the hearts of all who walked onto Punt Road etc etc” simply on the grounds that the Tigers suffered the indignity of being the first team to lose to the mob from the land of white shoes and bikini clad meter maids. Nor have the Gold Coast seemed to go looking to make enemies, probably a wise decision for what remains a mere stripling of a club.
The Greater Western Sydney Giants on the other hand give the impression of being the league equivalent of the drunk teenager at the party who has just been dumped by his girlfriend. They’re itching for a fight. Word has it the Swans players were less than impressed with some of the onfield comments, and perceived lack of respect they contained for one of the league’s most successful teams of later years, made by GWS players in Round One of the 2014 season. That GWS ended up getting the win wouldn’t have helped the Blood Stained Angels’ mood either.
Creating a cross town rivalry in Sydney is a key strategic aim for the AFL but try as the mouthy GWS youngsters may, they still need Sydney to come to the party. GWS is kind of North Korea here, issuing blood curdling threats to their far more successful neighbour, which politely refuses to be publicly drawn. For the Swans know what a real rivalry is, their epic finals clashes with West Coast during the midpoint of last decade ticking all the rivalry boxes.
GWS might have more luck in riling up their geographic equivalent in Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs. Poaching two of the Dogs’ best players in Callan Ward and especially Ryan Griffen did not make the upstarts in orange at all popular with the long suffering Doggies fans. That the Bulldogs hit back by luring a number one draft pick from GWS in Tom Boyd added fuel to the fire. The Cambodians and Thais periodically engage in deadly skirmishing over a temple sitting in a disputed border region and sooner or later one side will miscalculate and a wider conflict will ensue. Could the same happen as the two youthful lists mature into finals contenders and a true rivalry that began with squabbling over a relatively minor matter escalates into a long standing hatred?
Then there’s the rivalries that definitely exist even if neutrals struggle to pin down the exact moment it began. Collingwood and St Kilda’s open distaste for another is plain for all to see. But why? Surely it can’t be because of 1966? But it keeps bubbling away, manifesting itself in events like Mick Malthouse’s comments to Stephen Milne, or the furious reaction by Sainters, and accompanying loathing by Pies, to Luke Ball’s defection over the wall. This seems to be a footy equivalent of a religious schism like the intra Islamic sectarian hatred between Shia and Sunni. The origins are there for those who take the time to look it up, but it still seems puzzling to the outsider that they’d maintain the hatred for so long.
The one guarantee in international politics is that no matter how bitter the dislike between two entities, they are more than capable of setting aside their differences temporarily if both parties feel working together could provide a shared benefit, to the point where formal agreements can be made along the lines of “We’ll get back to killing each other once we’ve dealt with this mob.” The marriage of convenience between Mao’s Communists and the Nationalists of Chiang Kai Shek to rid China of the Japanese invader is a textbook example of such a devil’s bargain. And so it is that North Melbourne, despite being the victims of an attempted genocide at the hands of John Elliott, have been working hand in glove with Carlton to try and sew up a Good Friday blockbuster if and when it happens.
New AFL boss Gillon McLachlan has been, since his coronation, desperate to show that the AFL have been listening to the fans – and we have grown restless in recent years – on a range of matters from the timing of games to the reintroduction of the traditional kick to kick on the ground after the game.
The formal AFL pitch for the new “fan friendly” season 2015 makes no explicit mention of a “rivalry round”. This is not to say one isn’t being lined up, but it also gives us hope that the powers that be have finally recognised the concept was a pile of crap to begin with.
Rivalries are a huge element – “What’s better than beating these bastards by ten goals? Beating them by a point!”- in our enjoyment of footy.
And we don’t need to be told, especially in the patronising fashion the AFL has down to a fine art, where they lie. Especially when we know that the AFL is only doing it in an attempt to create more “blockbusters” and thus higher attendances and ratings.
If the rivalry round is indeed gone, let us hope it has suffered the fate of Carthage when the Romans finally managed to take a decisive lead in that ancient feud, its walls smashed, and fields strewn with salt so it may never rise again.
You guys concentrate on getting the Grand Final in HD Mr McLachlan sir, we’ll able to work out who we hate.
And maybe even why.
