Bestbird
14 Aug 2006, 01:13
Interesting Article in the AGE about the amount of fan support seen last week for the game against the Saints
I have noticed that the Eagles chant in the last quarter a few times this year in away games has been more pronounced than in previous years. The crowd at Manuka in Canberra had a large Eagles element as well eallier in the season
Victorian Eagle fans suggest strange new world
Rohan Connolly
August 13, 2006
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2006/08/12/1154803146270.html
THERE was something particularly significant about West Coast's commanding performance against St Kilda at Telstra Dome the other Friday night, far more about what was going on in the stands than on the playing field.
As the Eagles swept the Saints aside with a seven-goal final quarter, you couldn't help but notice the level of noise that accompanied each successive nail in St Kilda's coffin, not to mention the amount of blue and gold waved in celebration.
If there had been a sudden mass migration of West Australians to these parts, it had clearly slipped under the radar. But the more likely explanation was simply what some Victorians might once have found unpalatable.
Here was a team that boasted some of the AFL's most sublime individual talents, which plays an at times breathtaking brand of football, and which appeals to an increasing number of fans even 3600 kilometres away from its home base.
It was certainly a far cry from the tiny pocket of support the Eagles used to occupy behind one set of goals when they visited Melbourne. And light years from the sort of paranoia West Coast's success of the early 1990s used to generate here. I can still recall "West Coast ****ers" stickers being hawked around Waverley Park on grand final day in 1991, when the Eagles reached their first premiership play-off.
There were desperate attempts by some sections of the media to paint their flag win against Geelong the following year as some sort of apocalypse for followers of the old VFL. And reports about the Eagles being abused and pelted with missiles on their MCG lap of honour were pure fiction, the reality being that they'd been accorded a generous reception after one of the better grand finals of recent times.
A decade and a half later, it's a mentality you can still detect occasionally in Melbourne's football media in instances such as the references to Adelaide as the "Crowbots". This is an easy sledge about a team whose coach, Neil Craig, intimidates with his use of sports science, and whose players remain, for some, a mystery.
But do football fans here really see Adelaide as some sort of dour, colourless machine without heart, soul, and the capacity to entertain?
I suspect not. And if they do, they're asking a lot of a side which, before this round, not only had easily the competition's best-performed defence, but also its most prolific attack, averaging more than 106 points a game.
For several Septembers before the Brisbane Lions and Port Adelaide gave us the first all-interstate grand final, in 2004, there used to be a predictable round of hand-wringing about the prospect of a half-filled MCG, and smart-alec lists of alternatives that Victorians might pursue rather than watch the biggest game of the year.
Of course, the ground was filled, the television ratings were huge, and the two teams offered a highly entertaining play-off. It was angst imagined then, and even harder to concoct now; the prospect of a third straight all-interstate grand final hardly seems to be causing Victorians to fly into a panic.
Why should they? If Adelaide and West Coast do square off on September 30, Victorian fans know they'll be watching one of the best midfield combinations the game has seen, in Chris Judd, Ben Cousins and Daniel Kerr, locking horns with another modern great in Andrew McLeod, the powerhouse that is Mark Ricciuto and the acrobatic Brett "Birdman" Burton.
That's a pretty tasty menu, one surely that transcends churlish whinges about defending Victorian honour.
And for the real children growing up with AFL football, teams such as the Crows and Eagles, Port Adelaide, Fremantle, Brisbane and Sydney aren't some band of alien interlopers storming in to take away something that is not rightfully theirs. They're just half-a-dozen clubs with profiles and pedigrees no different to those of Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, or any of the other Victorian teams, albeit with less history behind them.
Those early attempts to paint the developing AFL competition as some sort of pitched warfare between different footballing states always seemed hollow. While it was a convenient angle to drum up supposed hatred for the non-Victorian clubs, indifference was about the least favourable response that Victorians could muster.
Even that doesn't seem the case any more. The longer the likes of West Coast and Adelaide succeed, and do so with the type of football that can drag people through the gates, the more support those clubs will acquire, even from fans without familial ties to the states where those teams reside.
The grandstands at Telstra Dome are never going to resemble Subiaco when the Eagles play here. But you only had to be sitting among the crowd at that recent game between St Kilda and West Coast to feel not only that the pendulum of football power has swung away from Victoria, but that a substantial cultural change in how Victorians view the interstaters has emerged along with it.
I have noticed that the Eagles chant in the last quarter a few times this year in away games has been more pronounced than in previous years. The crowd at Manuka in Canberra had a large Eagles element as well eallier in the season
Victorian Eagle fans suggest strange new world
Rohan Connolly
August 13, 2006
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2006/08/12/1154803146270.html
THERE was something particularly significant about West Coast's commanding performance against St Kilda at Telstra Dome the other Friday night, far more about what was going on in the stands than on the playing field.
As the Eagles swept the Saints aside with a seven-goal final quarter, you couldn't help but notice the level of noise that accompanied each successive nail in St Kilda's coffin, not to mention the amount of blue and gold waved in celebration.
If there had been a sudden mass migration of West Australians to these parts, it had clearly slipped under the radar. But the more likely explanation was simply what some Victorians might once have found unpalatable.
Here was a team that boasted some of the AFL's most sublime individual talents, which plays an at times breathtaking brand of football, and which appeals to an increasing number of fans even 3600 kilometres away from its home base.
It was certainly a far cry from the tiny pocket of support the Eagles used to occupy behind one set of goals when they visited Melbourne. And light years from the sort of paranoia West Coast's success of the early 1990s used to generate here. I can still recall "West Coast ****ers" stickers being hawked around Waverley Park on grand final day in 1991, when the Eagles reached their first premiership play-off.
There were desperate attempts by some sections of the media to paint their flag win against Geelong the following year as some sort of apocalypse for followers of the old VFL. And reports about the Eagles being abused and pelted with missiles on their MCG lap of honour were pure fiction, the reality being that they'd been accorded a generous reception after one of the better grand finals of recent times.
A decade and a half later, it's a mentality you can still detect occasionally in Melbourne's football media in instances such as the references to Adelaide as the "Crowbots". This is an easy sledge about a team whose coach, Neil Craig, intimidates with his use of sports science, and whose players remain, for some, a mystery.
But do football fans here really see Adelaide as some sort of dour, colourless machine without heart, soul, and the capacity to entertain?
I suspect not. And if they do, they're asking a lot of a side which, before this round, not only had easily the competition's best-performed defence, but also its most prolific attack, averaging more than 106 points a game.
For several Septembers before the Brisbane Lions and Port Adelaide gave us the first all-interstate grand final, in 2004, there used to be a predictable round of hand-wringing about the prospect of a half-filled MCG, and smart-alec lists of alternatives that Victorians might pursue rather than watch the biggest game of the year.
Of course, the ground was filled, the television ratings were huge, and the two teams offered a highly entertaining play-off. It was angst imagined then, and even harder to concoct now; the prospect of a third straight all-interstate grand final hardly seems to be causing Victorians to fly into a panic.
Why should they? If Adelaide and West Coast do square off on September 30, Victorian fans know they'll be watching one of the best midfield combinations the game has seen, in Chris Judd, Ben Cousins and Daniel Kerr, locking horns with another modern great in Andrew McLeod, the powerhouse that is Mark Ricciuto and the acrobatic Brett "Birdman" Burton.
That's a pretty tasty menu, one surely that transcends churlish whinges about defending Victorian honour.
And for the real children growing up with AFL football, teams such as the Crows and Eagles, Port Adelaide, Fremantle, Brisbane and Sydney aren't some band of alien interlopers storming in to take away something that is not rightfully theirs. They're just half-a-dozen clubs with profiles and pedigrees no different to those of Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, or any of the other Victorian teams, albeit with less history behind them.
Those early attempts to paint the developing AFL competition as some sort of pitched warfare between different footballing states always seemed hollow. While it was a convenient angle to drum up supposed hatred for the non-Victorian clubs, indifference was about the least favourable response that Victorians could muster.
Even that doesn't seem the case any more. The longer the likes of West Coast and Adelaide succeed, and do so with the type of football that can drag people through the gates, the more support those clubs will acquire, even from fans without familial ties to the states where those teams reside.
The grandstands at Telstra Dome are never going to resemble Subiaco when the Eagles play here. But you only had to be sitting among the crowd at that recent game between St Kilda and West Coast to feel not only that the pendulum of football power has swung away from Victoria, but that a substantial cultural change in how Victorians view the interstaters has emerged along with it.