AFL V Australian Football: Re-brand the National Competition as the 'Australian Football League'

[SydneyGoose]

I'm jumping in late in the game here but I'm gonna bring a point in on why it's called afl and why it always will have the afl moniker about it, and it's really simple and has noting to do with marketing.

AFL = 3 Syllables

Aussie Rules = 4 Syllables

It's quicker to say afl than it is to say Aussie Rules so it will never go away.

Sherrin or Marn Grook may have some success as they're both shorter than AFL, and Aussie Rules will always be around somewhere, but till then it'll be AFL.

Feel as offended as you all want about the Football/Footy thing, but here in Sydney you only ever use Footy when you're talking to people who know you and know what footy you're talking about. Until people associate you with a sport they call each sport by a nick name, and AFL's quickest.

I'm unusual because I say Footy for "AFL" and Football for Association Football.

And on the point about emphasising the Australian side of it, I'm a massive AFL supporter and despise League and I think that people who harp on about the Australian part as a selling point are idiots. I don't follow it because it's Australian, I follow it because I think it's better. In Sydney we have a lot of American Supporters who come because they can't watch gridiron and see the "Australian" part and decide to have a gander and get hooked, but that's about the extent I think you can get out of it marketing wise.

And Sydneysiders don't think that Imported is better. It's just that when we see the AFL marketing it as the Australian Game we think that we are being told how to be better Australians and we're offended by it.

Also, next person I hear complain about the rape of Fitzroy can shove it because the AFL r*ped the identity of almost every Sydney AFC around. Wests were even made to change their Guernsey so that it looked like the Collingwood one. We can't really just "Promote" one of our teams to the AFL to make up WS18 because we only have about 4 Unique Identities!

But I degress. AFL won't go away unless we have a shorter name. League is shorter than NRL so we use League. Rugby (Union) is Rugby because of the two Rugby codes it actually deserves the name, and you can't get much shorter. Football will succeed over Soccer because it's the same length sylabically and Football fans are so pigheaded about it we'll give up arguing.

If you want to do away with the AFL moniker, do away with the AFL board, commission, etc or adopt Marn Grook!

 

[jpdixon]

Soccer is a game where most of the time players soccer the ball .
Look it up in the dictionary . Soccer is an apt name for Cambridge rules football or Association Football .

Aussie Rules is the only game in world where the ball is specifically designed for kicking over long distances .Kicking over long distances , short distances and even the occasional soccer .
It is the utmost arrogance that a sport attempts to exclusively call itself a general term . Does Ford claim they own the term "car" just because they did it best in the early days .

The third paragraph is spot on, but the first part is way off target. The verb "to soccer" is only used in Aussie Rules circles, and comes from the nickname of Association Football, not the other way round. About the only dictionary you'll find it in is the Macquarie, and even they haven't quite got the meaning right.

"Soccer" started as a simple short-name, like "rugger" for rugby. For some reason, in Australia some fans have gone from being legitimately upset that their code wasn't often recognised as a football code, to being offended by the name "soccer", even though it is still sometimes used quite neutrally in England where it is so strong that fans are not paranoid.

There is also nothing offensive to the code about using "AFL" to refer to Australian Football. The difference is that noone is saying that it is offensive. It is just usually ignorant and mangles the meaning and robs our language of a useful distinction. It is not a nickname, it is a name with a different meaning. A league is a different thing to a code. Confusing the two needs a pretty good reason, and in some context could possibly be demeaning of the league or offensive to other leagues.

Rugby league and Rugby union are both names that sound like the name of an organisation, rather than a code, but have come to be used as names of the codes. This is partly because the two different Rugby codes did start off pretty much just as separate competitions, and the divergence in rules followed. It also helps that there weren't organisations simply called "rugby union" and "rugby league" - there were other words as well. In any case, the usual names became common so long ago that there is nothing to complain about.

In NSW at least, I think the move to using the name of a league/body for the code in general tended to start with the rugby league wars of the 90s. Noone called rugby league "ARL" or "NSWRL" before then, but then the name of the competition needed talking about, and it stuck. This is consistent with the push by the AFL, which is all about the branding of the governing body. Of course, the AFL did refer to market research in the northern states, so even their push possibly has the popular linguistic response to the NRL as a factor.

It looks like "AFL" might take over as a name for the code, and in a few generations there might not be anyone thinking twice about it, like league and union. Language does change, and sometimes words do have more than one meaning. But until it has completely taken hold, it's fair enough to point out that this branding can be confusing and emphasises the current governing body a bit too much.

 

[GasometerCourage]

AFL = 3 Syllables

Aussie Rules = 4 Syllables

Ummm...

 

[col44]

Ummm...

LOL Got him yes hes out.

Aussie Rules.. the shortened form of the full name I grew up with:
Australian Rules Football.

AFL is the league.. not the bloody game. I understand why the league has marketed the sport this way.. but quite simply its a poor long term mistake. Its the word Aussie (or lack thereof) that is the big fail when using AFL as a descriptive term for the sport. Aussie Rules - It says its Aussie (no bloody neck ties thanks) and Rules (yeah thats right we came up with how this game goes)

This is not IBM, CIA, FBI, NAB, NSW.. this is our football!!

And yes like a pom that gets asked about soccer, it shits me to tears when people talk about the local AFL comp and their 12 Yr Old AFL star.

IF YOU WANT PEOPLE TO BELIEVE ITS THE AUSTRALIAN GAME - AND HAS BEEN FOR 150 YEARS.. STOP F^&$ING WITH ITS NAME.

 

[Minkus_Swan]

Fritz = Devon