Historical debate - Flanagan's rubbish conclusions on the 7:30 Report

[Cyclops]

It is a marketing ploy, the AFL are a pack of cheap w******s. Doesn't mean aborigines haven't played a great part in our game.

Slagging off "Indigenous Round" for that reason is like slapping your mum because Mothers Day is a capitalist rort.

.. the black armband view of the world...

The worst thing about the soft left version of events is its usually crap history, and it lets in poisonous worms like Windschuttle to score easy points.

No proof for Aborigines influence in the original rules. To deny that is to let in the rednecks for a free shot.

Only a mean spirited dog would deny the part of aborigines in footy history. State the obvious, there's a clear affinity between Aussie rules and the aboriginal games. The rest is speculation.

 

[Chaz Pendlebury]

I take the broader view on this question.

Flanagan may be a feel-good touchy-feely tree-hugging Tasmanian intellectual footsoldier of the "professional Irish" catholic mafia, but I think his version of events is closer to reality than the purple-faced Rotarian crypto-fascist Pom lovers.

Everyone plays footy of a sort. Europe has an ancient tradition of kicking a ball for fun, as does pretty much everyone. Just cause there's a set of rules mentioned at Rugby school doesn't mean they invented it, just they wrote down a (pretty dull and constipated) version of it.

Our rules were obviously aware of Rugby rules, but its equally obvious they were influenced negatively: "f*** no, we're not having that offside crap!". You can get bogged down in the minutiae of who sat on the rules committee.

On the goldfields did any diggers call a halt to play if someone ran forwards of the ball and declaimed "Thats not how it was done in Dr Arnold's day!"? Bulldust they did.

The official version seems to be now that Aussie rules is a full son to Rugby. I feel strongly this is not so: both are formal crystallisations of existing game-playing cultures from pan-European (and all but the most mean-spirited and intellectually impoverished would agree Aboriginal) backgrounds.

Everyone who played the game helped invent it. Aborigines played the game. They brought their stuff to it. They deserve their mention.

Brilliant post. I've highlighted the bits wot i like most

 

[Clint Bizkit]

You can watch the five minute segment on the ABC website.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/

The lady in this (Gillian Hibbins) isn't nearly as convincing as those that oppose her idea.

 

[crudbucket]

Marn Grook is part of Australian history. We must pay homage to it. It is part of each and every one of us. There need not be a direct empirically proven link to Marn Grook for Australian Football to celebrate it.

You are Un-Australian Flanagan.

Marn Grook is part of Australian history. (Unproven.)
We must pay homage to it. (Why ?)
It is part of each and every one of us. (An opinion at best)
There need not be a direct empirically proven link to Marn Grook for Australian Football to celebrate it. (??? Why celebrate something if it's not true?)

 

[Dont be a lemon]

ABC/SBS have the only news and current affairs programs worth watching on FTA

HolyWars speaks the truth

 

[skilts]

BTW Tom W Wills also took an ALL aboriginal cricket on a tour of England in the late 1800s so to say he had no empathy or knowlege of their customs of the local Indiginous people is beyond belief.
The irony is that his father was later killed by aborigines on his farm in QLD.

It's not commonly known that the aborigines concerned were never convicted of the murder. It transpired that on hearing evidence that Wills' father was a Collingwood supporter, the judge deemed it to have been justifiable homicide. Now there's a precedent.

 

[Cyclops]

It's not commonly known that the aborigines concerned were never convicted of the murder. It transpired that on hearing evidence that Wills' father was a Collingwood supporter, the judge deemed it to have been justifiable homicide. Now there's a precedent.

Not the first time a tribunal decided something in favour of Qld against us.