Resource The NAFL Historical Archive, discussion thread

[Gibbsy]

I've been promising this for over a year and now I'm finally delivering on it. Here is the long-awaited National Australian Football League archive (I'm looking at you E92_) in all its historical glory – the excitement, the failure, the revival. Usernames are presented in their current formats for tagging purposes, although an appendix is attached at the footer.

This thread will be used to post all my information as I research and write it, feel free to comment and discuss also. At the conclusion of the archive (which I don't suspect to be for many weeks yet), all the actual archive posts will be copied into a new, locked thread to be preserved for reference.

I suggest while reading the posts that you don't bother clicking on the thread links until you've finished reading the entire article; I basically summarise the threads in the article anyway.

Enjoy!

 

[Craegus]

About time.

If you require any imagery or historical references from the Whales/Makos Organisation let me know as I have all of the uniforms (including from the original failed season) and most of the logos.

 

[MKMatty]

Does this include the reserves? Or is it just the league proper?

 

[Gibbsy]

The National Australian Football League (NAFL) is the pre-eminent design competition on BigFooty’s Footy Jumpers and Graphic Design board, due to its prestigious status as the longest-running continuous series and the consistently high quality of entries.

The brainchild of legendary ‘Golden Age’ poster InCase, the NAFL was the first proper ‘league’ style competition to be touted on the board, a format which has since been adopted for countless competitions. The competition was first floated on December 13, 2010; InCase’s proposal was as follows…

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The backstory
Imagine Brisbane and West Coast did not join the VFL, instead, a new league was invented. A few wealthy people set up the NAFL, and introduced new teams from around Australia. 2 in WA, 2 in SA, 2 in Vic, 1 in NSW, 1 in Queensland, 1 in Tasmania, 1 in the Northern Territory and 1 in New Zealand.

The idea
A few elite wealthy businessmen will be given the opportunity to buy these franchises, their proposal will determine whether they will be given the chance to join the league.

The proposal must consist of their location of choice, as well as the franchises name and nickname. As well as a secondary location - if their first is not available. Depending on the credentials of the owner, as well as their proposal, franchises will be chosen.

The competition format
Each franchise will submit their logo design, home guernsey and away guernsey. Their will then be 10 rounds (in a format similar to AJL), with 5 home and 5 away games each, the top 4 will the go into a knockout tournament which will be brand vs brand (both guernseys and logo) rather then guernsey vs guernsey.

So if you want to be involved in this competition, please post your location and nickname, as well as a back up location if your primary location is unavailable. Remember it isn't first in best dressed, there's only 11 spots so people that post regularly and are reliable will be given the opportunity in the first season first. Hopefully we can get 11 people.

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InCase described the competition as “a mixture of [then long-running competition Kit of the Week] and AJL”, the latter an on-again, off-again thread known as the Australian Jumper League that pits real-life guernsey match-ups against one another to determine the best kit in the AFL each season.

The competition proposal was ahead of its time in asking for the submission of a home guernsey, away guernsey and logo, in a time when logos were rarely posted – and almost never created from scratch. InCase did, however, allow for logo recolours. The floor was opened for bid submissions, with each budding designer allowed to submit two franchise bids: a primary and secondary location. Cory's “Melbourne Flying Foxes” was the first official bid, a team which would later go on to have much success in the ‘rebooted’ NAFL of months past.

The initial thread, containing the proposal and subsequent franchise bidding, featured a number of posters still around today while others have disappeared into the Internet ether. Names like craegus, Damo FC and E92_ feature early in proceedings, while other renowned designers of years gone by such as Smeagle, Speck, GANTY and Willo #6 are also present.

In the very first day of the thread being open, interest is wild. 44 bids are posted by 22 different designers, InCase having the unenviable task of sorting the wheat from the chaff and deciding the 11 teams to compete in the inaugural NAFL season. StGradey is the first to suggest the possibility of a two-division competition given the sheer weight of entries, floating the idea of “2 leagues of 16”, although it falls on deaf ears at the time.

A mere three days later, InCase posts the final bid list of 60 franchise presentations from across Australia and New Zealand, as well as confirming interest in a second “tier”. InCase conferred with two anonymous judges, one of whom I believe to have been Smeagle, to assist in determining the 11 lucky bids.

Later that day, on December 16, 2010, the “NAFL Franchise Owner Announcement” thread is posted by InCase. The 11 successful “owners” were advised to private message InCase with their designs, with all guernseys to be released at the one time on a later date. If design submissions were prompt, a second division would be opened up “to new owners and new locations”.

The list of confirmed participants in what I have retrospectively dubbed “NAFL: Season Zero” were:

* Cory – Melbourne Flying Foxes (VIC)
* workhorse – Murray River Bushrangers (VIC)
* cronkadonk – Port Adelaide Black Hawks (SA)
* GANTY – Adelaide City (SA)
* Gibbsy – Geraldton Breakers (WA)
* Smeagle – Rottnest Island “Rotto” Torque (WA)
* Damo FC – Canberra Griffens (NSW/ACT)
* Sepul – Queensland Cyclones (QLD)
* Willo #6 – Tasmanian Tigers (TAS)
* Omegaville – Yulara Rocks (NT)
* craegus – Wellington Whales (NZ)

Of the 11, only Ganty and Smeagle hadn’t submitted their designs by the quick cutoff date of December 23, 2010. InCase clearly had intentions to get the competition running soon after the remarkable initial interest, requesting the designs to be in “ASAP”. Cory touted Smeagle as an early favourite to take out the title, while unsuccessful bidder Alberton_Magpie joined the growing chorus of posters keen for a second division.

The next day, InCase posted a “NAFL Tier 2 Bidding” thread, throwing down the gauntlet to a host of new designers that were unsuccessful in their original bids. With that came new locations; the NAFL went intercontinental in its hope to attract English and South African bids while still containing the majority in Australia as per the first-grade competition. InCase’s Tier 2 proposal was as follows…

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With the unexpected amount of bids for the initial season of NAFL, there has been a second tier of competition opened up for another 11 owners.

Restrictions:
Nicknames:
Flying Foxes, Bushrangers, Black Hawks, City, Breakers, Torque, Griffens, Cyclones, Tigers, Rocks, Whales.

Locations:
Melbourne, Murray River, Port Adelaide, Adelaide, Geraldton, Rottnest, Canberra, Yulura, Wellington.

This is a club competition; state and town names only, countries will not be accepted (i.e. Wellington, acceptable; New Zealand, unacceptable) - this is a new rule from tier 2 onwards.

Canberra and ACT will not be accepted as NSW bids in tier 2.

As with the first tier, a primary and secondary location and nickname must be submitted.

State Eligibility:
Victoria - 2
South Australia - 2
Western Australia - 2
New South Wales - 2
Queensland - 1
England - 1
South Africa - 1

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Interest was again strong; by the closing date of December 20, 2010, a total of 37 bids had been confirmed by InCase. England proved a popular choice for potential owners, with 10 English bids proposed for just the one opening. As InCase noted, the nature of the bidding process meant that those attempting inclusion with an English team had only a 10% of success, in comparison to those bidding for a Victorian team who had a 66% chance due to the low number of bids. A number of posters proposed bid changes to combat this, but the bids had already been sent to the anonymous judges and were set in stone.

On December 23, 2010, the “NAFL T2 Franchise Owner Announcement” thread was posted by InCase and the entire movement was gathering steam in the days approaching Christmas. Another 11 lucky posters were granted a spot in the NAFL’s second division, to be known as “Tier 2”. The confirmed participants for what I have retrospectively dubbed “NAFL Reserves: Season Zero” were:

* TheDoctor11 – Portland Smelters (VIC)
* Snoopy Junior – Bendigo Nuggets (VIC)
* Speck – Kangaroo Island “Island Kangaroos” (SA)
* El_Scorcho – Southern Vikings (SA)
* usafootyfan – Western Wallabies (WA)
* mobitout – Western Australia Wolves (WA)
* Silent Alarm – Sydney Olympians (NSW)
* Molons – Hunter Valley Eagles (NSW)
* Alberton_Magpie – Brisbane Spartans (QLD)
* Easty – Portsmouth Admirals (ENG)
* 23hammy23 – Johannesburg Pride (RSA)

Discussion around sponsors and logos continued in the Tier 2 thread over the Christmas period, while the “Tier 1” thread remained stagnant. A number of teams had also written up short paragraphs explaining the backstory of their designs. On New Years Eve of that year, InCase explained he was going on holidays for the next fortnight and the start of the competition would likely be when he returned from his trip. Keen posters kept both threads alive until on January 13, 2011, InCase admitted his Internet connection on holidays was patchy, therefore the start would be somewhat delayed. And then… nothing.

It wasn’t until a Cory thread on March 30, 2011 that there was any more discussion about the NAFL. He mused “What happened to the NAFL?” and craegus revealed that InCase had confirmed he was still going ahead with the competition, but “didn’t have permanent internet to be able to work on it”. Given there were only three responders to the OP, interest in the competition had considerably waned, although this may have been to do with the controversial ‘sub-board’ that contained all active competitions at the time.

Interestingly, the board seemed to run like normal during that time of no discussion. The popular Cross Code Combination Competition (CCCC) continued to be run by pie_machine, an array of unrelated discussion threads were posted, and even InCase himself was back posting in February 2011 about the possibility of player names on AFL guernseys. But it was like the NAFL had never existed.

Gibbsy’s bump of the original NAFL thread on June 26, 2011 tried to spark life back into the competition concept. And InCase still clearly had hope of reviving the competition, saying so a week later in the same thread, but also admitted he was short on time since finding a new job and would only be able to “look back into it” over “the next couple of months”.

With that, the prestigious NAFL – a competition that had never generated so much interest in the five-year history of the board – was buried. Until a white knight by the name of Lion Cub 16 appeared just two months later…

(to be continued)

Note:
The following posters were known by these usernames at the time of the competition:

• Cory – "cory676"
• Damo FC – "Damo Crows Fan"
• Speck – "St Specky"
• El_Scorcho – "Thunder_Power14"
• Easty – "EastyEffect"

 

[Gibbsy]

Does this include the reserves? Or is it just the league proper?

All of it. I'm hoping there's a lot of information that people never knew about, and that the 'articles' are as much fun to read as they were to write.

About time.

If you require any imagery or historical references from the Whales/Makos Organisation let me know as I have all of the uniforms (including from the original failed season) and most of the logos.

Cheers, if you had the original NAFL logo (the horizontal one) that'd be great

 

[MKMatty]

All of it. I'm hoping there's a lot of information that people never knew about, and that the 'articles' are as much fun to read as they were to write.



Cheers, if you had the original NAFL logo (the horizontal one) that'd be great

I'm a history nut as much as I am a jumper collected, so this threads got me tingling with anticipation!

 

[Gibbsy]

I'm a history nut as much as I am a jumper collected, so this threads got me tingling with anticipation!

How'd you like the first article? Obviously there are no graphics as the comp never actually came to fruition, so it is a bit text-heavy, but there's more to come...

 

[E92_]

Cheers, if you had the original NAFL logo (the horizontal one) that'd be great

I believe these are the original logos for the two divisions (switch red/yellow to grey/light blue iirc).

 

[E92_]

I remember being pretty disappointed when I wasn't selected for the first division, then thinking I was a sure thing for the second division and then being even more disappointed when I wasn't selected.

 

[Gibbsy]

I believe these are the original logos for the two divisions (switch red/yellow to grey/light blue iirc).

Yessss me boy. Cheers.

 

[E92_]

Yessss me boy. Cheers.

When's the next part going up?

 

[Gibbsy]

When's the next part going up?

When I write it.

Nah, the next part will probably be the archive of the initial bids, so it won't take too long. I'm trying to recolour that logo though with not much luck.

 

[Craegus]

I believe these are the original logos for the two divisions (switch red/yellow to grey/light blue iirc).

When I write it.

Nah, the next part will probably be the archive of the initial bids, so it won't take too long. I'm trying to recolour that logo though with not much luck.

Here is the version of the old logo I have:

 

[Gibbsy]

Here is the version of the old logo I have:

Thank you Craegus!

 

[MKMatty]

How'd you like the first article? Obviously there are no graphics as the comp never actually came to fruition, so it is a bit text-heavy, but there's more to come...

It was a bit text heavy. Didn't think the bit about other comps running was really necessary, could have been shortened with just a "the comp went away, time past and nothing came of the talk" sort of thing. But otherwise it was a rather enjoyable article to read.

 

[Jones2ByrneJones]

Can we have a section on how I mildly rigged the poll so that my logo became official in S2?

 

[Fizzler]

I've pm'end one of the reserves seasons to you

 

[Dylan8]

Can we have a section on how I mildly rigged the poll so that my logo became official in S2?

The one the current logo is based on?

* you, I wanted the beer logo to win. That was dank.

 

[El_Scorcho]

How did you rig the vote?

Brilliant.

 

[Jones2ByrneJones]

By putting my design first in the poll and all competitors halfway through or at the bottom.

People always vote for the first thing in the poll if it's at least decent.

 

[El_Scorcho]

I was hoping the ruse was more complex, but i'll take it

 

[Jones2ByrneJones]

I was hoping the ruse was more complex, but i'll take it

To be fair I did say 'mildly'

 

[Greater Gattsby]

I was hoping the ruse was more complex, but i'll take it

I was hoping it was going to the effort of making 25 alias accounts and all voting for option 1.

Well, it's been done before...

 

[Craegus]

By putting my design first in the poll and all competitors halfway through or at the bottom.

People always vote for the first thing in the poll if it's at least decent.

There should be only one person who should be angry about that, the one who designed the second place logo in that poll.........

 

[El_Scorcho]

I was hoping there were some elaborate backroom deals related to username changes and liking posts from 2010