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I mainly watch AFL and soccer. It's funny, for a live game sometimes AFL drags on a bit. I went to an EPL game in london last year and it felt too short, I was wondering what comes next?
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AFL overtaking NRL in QLD
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I’ve always felt like league misses out on more opportunities to schedule double headers for that very reason.
Having never lived in the city even at 41 it is still a novelty for me to go to a game, I might get to one a year across the codes. 80 minutes of rugby league doesn’t feel like enough.
With more actual home grounds it is harder but with a couple of teams playing out of Commbank at the moment or a few out of the Olympic stadium it seems like it would make sense to schedule a few. Two afl games, much as I love it, would be a stretch given the time factor
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VAR is killing soccer with perfectly good goals disallowed, and other goals given when it's clear an offence has been commited by the team scoring a goal in the built up to that goal, and in most cases VAR favours the bigger clubs.
What metric is this by?
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its an indexed score based on a variety of rankings theyve done
The issue is the nature of the game, we moan about umpiring in the AFL but in soccer one dodgy offence or a dive can lead to a completely flipped result. In no other sport does the match official have that much power.
Its interesting the AFL popularity here, lots of families are choosing AFL now as it's somewhat a more accommodating sport for junior athletes (Size, Weight, speeds etc), participation in junior competition and attendance is comfortably catching RL. RL does really well on the back of Touch and Oz-tag for juniors, do these fall under RL or their own sports?
My kid plays AFL and Oz Tag, he isn't particularly interested in RL but his AFL mates and school friends do a social Oz Tag team each year, its great fitness and skill work.
Both touch sports are rugby league without the tackling, Touch Football is known as NRL Touch Football and is obviously affiliated with NRL but Oztag is fully independently run and not affiliated with NRL.
Of late there have been moves from all parties to align NRL and Oztag - such as NRL sponsoring and partnering on oztag events and the Oztag referee program which leverages the nrl.
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Makes sense, there is some way to go for AFL to catch up with those variations..
Pure AFL vs Pure NRL I think would be much closer.
It makes a lot of sense why the NRLW quality has been so good early on vs AFLW with so many pathways with the varieties of the sport available to Junior Girls (Touch, Oztag, 7's etc)..
Yes there a lot of women playing rugby league including it’s touch variants verses AFLW which corralled a bunch of athletes across a variety of balls sports and athletics to create a competition.
The Educator
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Well, looking at the Ausplay survey, it is saying there are 7,624 girls (14 and under) playing aus football in Queensland.....compared to respectively 2320 playing rugby league (i.e. 3 times as much), 9,139 playing touch football, and 2,596 playing oztag.
So the AFL has over 3 times the number as contact rugby league and you are left with touch football particularly doing a lot of heavy lifting.
What makes sense for the NRLW quality being perceived as better than the AFLW is
-far less players (there are only now similar rostered numbers in the NRLW to the AFLW in 2017 when it started)
-a far far lower skill requirement to participate
The latter being the biggest factor. The actual national participation of girls playing Aus football is 4 and a half times rugby league. It is 3 and a half times touch football if you really want to make out that is the same sport (I played touch football in mixed teams with people who wouldn't even know there are two rugby codes).
The Educator
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Actually came in here to drop this one (assuming it has been posted earlier in the thread but I didn't see it)
So more people think Aus football is the number 1 sport than cricket in Queensland, and almost double than those that think rugby league is!
This obviously doesn't mean that AF has passed RL in Queensland but it points to the cultural conditions that mean it has passed the point of cultural suppression
So more people think Aus football is the number 1 sport than cricket in Queensland, and almost double than those that think rugby league is!
This obviously doesn't mean that AF has passed RL in Queensland but it points to the cultural conditions that mean it has passed the point of cultural suppression
So that’s like 15,000 playing a rugby league variation. Plus add those women playing rugby union. So you have a large volume of women playing rugby to draw talent from in comparison to afl though it’s growing.
Don’t really agree with this. What makes NRLW better quality is because the players are better at their sport and playing it at a high level compared to the AFLW equivalent.
The reasons for this are all the players have been playing rugby league, a touch rugby league or rugby union equivalent for a considerable time to develop excellence. In comparison to the AFLW players who only a smaller percent have played Aussie rules for any considerable length of time.
AFL is quite a chaotic sport when played by men at the peak level, and even with men’s it can be quite messy. The women’s game exacerbates this because they’re not anywhere close to the same skill level.
The other factor is the kicking and the distance of the field. Women just can’t consistently kick those lengths. They need to shorten the field.
Rugby league has different types of skills needed to excel, not less skills. Like soccer, looks like it’s easy just dribble and kick but it requires a lot of skill to perform at peak level.
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Absolute nonsense - yes, there were a few high profile and highly publicised athletes recruited from a few other sports - mainly from netball and basketball (and even most of these had played some football in the past) and Gaelic from Ireland. But nearly all players (> 95%) were, in fact, recruited directly from the already long and well established respective state women’s football leagues.
As per Wiki - "The first all-female matches began early in the 20th century, and regular competition first emerged after World War II. State-based leagues emerged between the 1980s and 2000s: the first was the Victorian Women's Football League(VWFL) formed in Melbourne in 1981, with others including the West Australian Women's Football League(WAWFL) formed in Perth in 1988 and the South Australian Women's Football League (SAWFL) formed in Adelaide in 1991. The AFL Women's National Championships were inaugurated in 1992.
In 2010 the Australian Football League (AFL) assumed control of the sport with the intention of professionalising it and began restructuring competitions around the country to support an Australian national league, AFL Women's (AFLW), that commenced its inaugural season in 2017." ... (this Wiki article has much more detail on the history of women's football prior to the start of AFLW). It also has participation stats, pointing out it is second only behind soccer.
Women's Australian rules football - Wikipedia
I didn’t say women haven’t been playing afl for a long time. Just when AFLW quickly went to 18 teams the amount of women playing afl at a high level was nowhere close to what’s needed to field 18 teams at a professional level.Absolute nonsense - yes, there were a few high profile and highly publicised athletes recruited from a few other sports - mainly from netball and basketball (and even most of these had played some football in the past) and Gaelic from Ireland. But nearly all players (> 95%) were, in fact, recruited directly from the already long and well established respective state women’s football leagues.
As per Wiki - "The first all-female matches began early in the 20th century, and regular competition first emerged after World War II. State-based leagues emerged between the 1980s and 2000s: the first was the Victorian Women's Football League(VWFL) formed in Melbourne in 1981, with others including the West Australian Women's Football League(WAWFL) formed in Perth in 1988 and the South Australian Women's Football League (SAWFL) formed in Adelaide in 1991. The AFL Women's National Championships were inaugurated in 1992.
In 2010 the Australian Football League (AFL) assumed control of the sport with the intention of professionalising it and began restructuring competitions around the country to support an Australian national league, AFL Women's (AFLW), that commenced its inaugural season in 2017." ... (this Wiki article has much more detail on the history of women's football prior to the start of AFLW). It also has participation stats, pointing out it is second only behind soccer.
Women's Australian rules football - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Yes a lot of athletes were either direct from other sports like basketball and netball or had played multiple sports including afl. At an elite level billed as such you’d be hoping all athletes have been playing afl at a high level before starting an elite professional competition.
I think starting with 12 teams and having a shortened field, and giving womens game it’s own timeframe to make its identity and skill grow would have been better than just trying to replicate the men’s competition overnight.
It’s quite embarrassing trying to put these women side by side to their men’s equivalent. It took 100+ years for afl men’s to go professional the women’s game needs to also earn its stripes too.
The Educator
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Except you can't just add those numbers (under 1k playing rugby union btw) as you need to factor a considerable overlap in participants of RL and the non contact rugby like sports. And that's even before acknowledging that someone playing touch football isn't anything like a one-for-one rugby league participant as someone actually playing contact AF.
Of course you don't
Absololute nonsense. We have already established the AFLW is drawing from a much bigger pool of players. THe vast majority of AFLW players have played football continiously since childhood. There were handfulls of players that transfered from other sports with any success and most of them played AF when they were kids.
Look pretty much anywhere in NSW and QLD even and you will find more girls and women playing contact AF compared to contact RL.
You are kind of getting to the truth but obviously cognitive dissonance saves you from facing up to it.
Rugby League has a far lower skill requirement and you can get away with very modest ball skills in most positions even at the elite level compared to AF.
Half the NRLW players might need to catch a dimpled ball being passed to them predictably from close range and not drop it in a given game. That is the extent of the skills needed. Every AFLW in a given game would need to do one or more of the following - catch a leather ball under pressure kicked from 40 metres; kick a leather football 40 metres to a moving target; gather a leather football travelling along the ground under pressure. Rugby league you can get away with 4 players who are asked anything comparable.
The gap in skill between the NRL and NRLW is at least as higher as between the AFL and AFLW it is just that the nature of the sports means that, the much higher skill level exposes 500th best Aus footballer whereas the 60th best women's league player just needs to catch a ball and run with it without dropping it
It’s a lot more transferable skills playing touch football to rugby league than netball to AFL. But in general touch football is rugby league, tackling and bracing for a tackle is a new skill set but the more important skills of footwork, ball handling etc are already there.
Hard disagree but sure if that’s what you think that’s your opinion.
Most can see with their own eyes the brand of football played in NRLW is entertaining. It’s more playing of the ball reminiscent of 80s rugby league without the wrestling and other tactics of men’s modern game. It’s good to watch and the skill level doesn’t seem to be vast between womens and mens. When the women play it looks like rugby league.
I do think there are some mechanics of rugby league that generally make it more suitable for women to play than afl. Which is probably why oztag and touch football have come about and so popular over decades, and not similar variations of afl.
Is afl really capable of being a good women’s sport without changing it to something that doesn’t actually resemble men’s afl? That’s the question for me. Right now it’s set up to exactly emulate the men’s game and I don’t think that’s working. I don’t think it has so much to do with all the ‘skills’ of afl, women are fully capable of acquiring skills. Just look at women’s tennis, women’s basketball, women’s soccer, women’s rugby and NRLW.
For AFL it’s to do with the size of field and length of kicks required -clearly you can acknowledge that this is a problem? Women don’t have the firepower necessary to kick those distances with the required accuracy sufficiently and consistently, which is evident just watching the games and seeing the scorelines.
If the field was smaller, less players on the field, shorter distance kicks required, youd see more goals and over time a more entertaining brand of womens Australian rules football form that doesn’t need to be the same as the men’s.
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Hampton, why aren’t you in the Giants thread anymore? Moved onto nrl trolling something else now?
Here’s the reality: touch footy was never counted as rugby league participation until a few years ago. When V’landys came in, the numbers were falling off a cliff, so they started padding the stats by including touch. Even my mate up in Queensland — who represented Australia in touch/tag — says “touch is not rugby league.”
As for the NRLW, the reason the standard looks higher is because rugby league has one of the most basic skill sets of any major sport: throw a synthetic ball a couple metres sideways and tackle. Compare that with Australian football, which has arguably the broadest and most demanding skill set of any game. That’s why the gap in standard looks bigger — there are simply more difficult skills to master.
Take handballing for example. It’s far harder than tossing a ball underarm. Run a clinic for kids and you’ll see half of them instinctively throw the ball because executing a proper handball is technically tougher. Even tackling in footy — where you can’t go high, in the back, or too low — is more technically difficult than a rugby tackle (though rugby tackling is more physically demanding, I’ll give it that). And that’s before you even get to the unique AFL skills — marking, bouncing, kicking on the run, hitting targets under pressure, reading the play in 360 degrees.
So yes, AFLW looks raw at times. But that’s because it’s the hardest game in the world to play. Participation is bigger, the athlete pool is deeper, and the skill ceiling is higher. Rugby league looks cleaner because it’s simpler — not because the athletes are better.
Here’s the reality: touch footy was never counted as rugby league participation until a few years ago. When V’landys came in, the numbers were falling off a cliff, so they started padding the stats by including touch. Even my mate up in Queensland — who represented Australia in touch/tag — says “touch is not rugby league.”
As for the NRLW, the reason the standard looks higher is because rugby league has one of the most basic skill sets of any major sport: throw a synthetic ball a couple metres sideways and tackle. Compare that with Australian football, which has arguably the broadest and most demanding skill set of any game. That’s why the gap in standard looks bigger — there are simply more difficult skills to master.
Take handballing for example. It’s far harder than tossing a ball underarm. Run a clinic for kids and you’ll see half of them instinctively throw the ball because executing a proper handball is technically tougher. Even tackling in footy — where you can’t go high, in the back, or too low — is more technically difficult than a rugby tackle (though rugby tackling is more physically demanding, I’ll give it that). And that’s before you even get to the unique AFL skills — marking, bouncing, kicking on the run, hitting targets under pressure, reading the play in 360 degrees.
So yes, AFLW looks raw at times. But that’s because it’s the hardest game in the world to play. Participation is bigger, the athlete pool is deeper, and the skill ceiling is higher. Rugby league looks cleaner because it’s simpler — not because the athletes are better.
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Touch rules are literally rugby league rules but with touching instead of tackling. Who cares about what branding it is or participation classifications etc we’re talking about the numbers of people playing this sport which is almost identical to rugby league so therefore there’s more women playing this plus tackle forms than afl. Therefore more people to draw from into elite pathways than afl womens has.
In terms of vlandys comments, it speaks more to the short sightedness and ineptitude of previous administrators and fixing things to what they should be. You should tell your friend the sport is called NRL Touch Football if he’s still unsure about what sport he plays. Touch is a variant of league like Rugby 9s is.
Skills again is much of muchness. Different skillsets in rugby league than afl. Different body types needed. Nrl has tall wingers, bulky forwards, nimble halves, who all have specialist skills but all league players have to run, pass, tackle, wrestle, kick on the fly (no marks), all while getting physically smashed. There’s so many rules around contact and what’s allowed and what’s not. Theres speed, endurance and intensity where fatigue plays a big factor of two 40m halves with limited interchange. There’s a mix of set tactical plays like NFL and on the fly reactivity. YouTube Xavier Coates, Mark nawaqanitawase or Greg Inglis and tell me what you think about their skills.
It’s very naive to boil down rugby league as passing a synthetic ball around.
Anyway let’s get back on track of afl taking over in qld.
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The Educator
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Bollocks. It has no kicking at all for a start. But the fact you can assert that with a straight face shows how limited a sport rugby league actually is.
nonsense. It is considerably less contact than soccer or basketball. How many NRLW players do you really think have grown up now playing contact rugby league at all and only playing touch football?
Except even if you accept the absurdity that a touch football player is equivalent to a junior AF player in terms of player pool, the latest Ausplay survey still had over 66K girls 14 and under playing organised AF versus under 20K playing touch football.
Telling someone they are playing "NRL Touch Football" does not overcome the fact that there are participants who don't even know they are playing a game related to rugby league, let-a-lone apparently playing a variant of it.
that's doing all the telling...
...firstly, nonsense that any significant number of NRLW players kick the ball beyond the rarest of circumstances
secondly, even if forced to kick, the skill requirement is very low for all but the players taking drop outs and conversions
thirdly, "no marks" highlights the fact that it is very rare that an nrlw player is actually forced to catch the ball from a kick
fourthly, the invented skill that "all" league players need, was one of only two actual ball skills youve mentioned!
seriously, the level of delusion being in here trying to argue NRLW have comparable ball skill requirements to AFLW players is stunning
Funny you've named three wing / centres....but completely missing the point
Watch a random game the Xavier Coates has played and, say, Billy Frampton in the AFL. Obviously Coates is the better athlete and sportsman but even the least skilled AFL player, in the least exposed position demands a much broader ball skills than a rugby league winger.
Of which the AFLW have tripple the female participants in QLD is surely relevant, no?
Oh good, we’re back to the circle jerk and attacking posters who dare to speak up on behalf of RL instead of actually talking about the topic at hand.
Anyway.
Great crowd at ENGIE last week. I was pretty impressed by the show they had on offer outside the stadium as well for young fans.
Anyway.
Great crowd at ENGIE last week. I was pretty impressed by the show they had on offer outside the stadium as well for young fans.
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Lolllll.
Sorry did you just say that the extent of the skills needed is to catch a dimpled ball from close range?
Dont bother trying to debate sensibly with anyone on the topic if that’s what you’re going to try and pass off as an informed option. Utter bullshit.
Macca180
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Don't be so naieve. The only people being attacked is our famous site troll and his fake alias names. flipping annoying campaigners.
Phatboy an Angus are NRL fans.. no one attacks them because they are not AFL hater trolls only here here to stir up shit.
They just follow both games which is fine.
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A Queensland derby final would help
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