Dusty, I never said that rl players are brainiacs. I do believe that a good majority have low iqs. League is a way out for them just as you would find a few neanderthals in afl. Not all but a reasonable percentage I am sure.
I actually agree with you about the thuggery. It is played up in the media. But if you ask most people why do they watch it, besides tradition etc a good percentage love watching the big hits.
Alice, you go on about afl crowds blah blah blah but the bottom line is in Sydney where there is one afl team, they struggle to pull 25,000-30,000 every second week. It is not the sport but the psyche of the city. In the 90s the Swans were regularly doing well to break the 10,000 barrier because they were losing. If you look at the official afl crowds figures then you will see that between 90-94 the average crowd for the Swans was about 9300. 9300 in a city area of about 4 million as it was back then. Obviously it was a novelty sport up here back then but also the Swans never won many matches. So that goes against them back then. Fair enough. But there can be no excuses these days. They only drew 8000 against Melbourne. They only drew 19,000 (with a bucketload of freebies) to a semi final match, our only afl team. Why, because it was on a cold wet night and people decided to watch it on tv. Which goes to prove my point, it is not the sport but the city. And yes traffic does come into it in Sydney. The response from people when asked about not going was because it was played at Homebush and the traffic to get there. That came from the Swans administration themselves.
Just like the Melbourne Storm in Melbourne they will always have a battle in the forseeable future. Maybe one day things will change as generations come and go. Both sports might be played everywhere. So be it. But for now AFL in Sydney is mostly followed by ex-pats. Quite often the crowd is half and half with away team supporters that live in Sydney esp teams like Collingwood.
