What's more Australian - AFL or NRL?

[Tezmyster]

You cannot legally throw the ball in Australian football but one may pass the ball by hand or foot in which direction one chooses but preferably not in the direction of the Umpire , being the person to judge the sport as distinct from areferree whose job it is to separate opponents in blood sports .

Ok, the person who posted saying you can pass forward was comparing it to NRL. In NRL a pass is effectively a throw, and when I said you can't "pass" the ball forward in AFL I was refering to the comparision to NRL that was being made. You can handball the ball forward in AFL, you can't pass it.

As for refering to "blood sports", I'm in the middle of reading the James Hird book "Challenging Times" where he talks about the facial injury he received in 2002, you can't tell me there was no blood involved there. And that's not to mention incidents such as what happened to Shaun Hart during the prelimary final this year. Nearly all team sports like AFL, NRL, etc, can be classified as blood sports when you look to the injury list, but in reality there's not that much difference between them in this regard.

 

[JF_Bay_22_SCG]

Sure rugby league is Australian............. and English, and South African...

Nice to know that despite the Wallabies/union and NRL/league being parts of the Australian sporting scene for decades, people in the something states STILL seem to be utterly perplexed to find out that rugby and league are two different sports.

Rugby league in South Africa, PULLLLLLEASE! Next you'll be asking when George Gregan is going to play in a State of Origin!

JF

 

[Tezmyster]

Nice to know that despite the Wallabies/union and NRL/league being parts of the Australian sporting scene for decades, people in the something states STILL seem to be utterly perplexed to find out that rugby and league are two different sports.

Rugby league in South Africa, PULLLLLLEASE! Next you'll be asking when George Gregan is going to play in a State of Origin!

JF

It's the Rugby word, Rugby League, Rugby Union, it all sounds the same so it must be the same according to some people. I enjoy watching Rugby Union because I think it's a great game, free flowing and active (like AFL). Rugby League is good but can be too stop start at times.

 

[littleduck]

Rugby league in South Africa, PULLLLLLEASE! Next you'll be asking when George Gregan is going to play in a State of Origin!

He's not that good

 

[littleduck]

It's the Rugby word, Rugby League, Rugby Union, it all sounds the same so it must be the same according to some people. I enjoy watching Rugby Union because I think it's a great game, free flowing and active (like AFL). Rugby League is good but can be too stop start at times.

It's beyond me how some think RL is more stop start than RU. RU is in a league of its own in terms of the amount of stoppages in play. It's painfully slow and boring at times. But I still love Union. Go the Reds!

 

[Sid]

Not the best place to be asking the question, with thousands of blokes who love AFL, wont be too many saying Rugby (unless your from Sydney)

Im from sydney and I say AFL. Anyone who is sane will say AFL. AFL is a more national sport by far with teams in 5 states, while NRL is only played in 3 states in australia.

 

[littleduck]

By Robert Pascoe, historian, author, Dean of arts at Victoria University

Divided by the Barassi Line



Why Sydney plays Rugby and Melbourne plays Rules




The winter game in Australia is football. Football in Australia can mean one of two things: the codes of Rugby played in Sydney, in Brisbane, and throughout their hinterlands, or the strange indigenous game known as Australian Rules, which dominates Melbourne, Hobart, Launceston, Adelaide, Kalgoorlie, Penh and the towns in between.(1) Drawing on the surname of the Australian game's most famous player, the late historian Ian Turner once declared: .Australia is divided by a deep cultural rift known as the Barassi tine. It runs between Canberra, Broken Hill, Birds-ville and Maningrida [Arnhem Land] and it divides Australia between Rugby and Rules.'(2) To the east of this imaginary Barassi Line, Rugby Union and Rugby League are by far the most important versions of football played, producing players equal to the best from New Zealand, Great Britain, South Africa and France. But to the west of this dividing line, a home-grown form of football was invented in Melbourne and spread widely after its official origins in 1858. Closer to Gaelic football or speedball than other variants of football, Australian Rules is a quick, high-scoring game which demands strength at ground level and athletic aerial abilities above the turf. It is not only a historical puzzle how such, a unique game could have developed in Australia -a small nation of 18 million people and derivative in most things -but why a continent with so few cultural or linguistic differences should have become divided so completely between Rugby and Rules.

The first clue to distinguishing between Sydney and Melbourne is to recognise the significance of their dates of founding, one in 1788 and the other in 1834. Between these two dates in British history, enormous changes in economy and polity took place. This half-century was characterised by the industrial revolution, the end of slavery in British possessions, dramatic developments in the history of science, and the emergence of working-class movements. The first British settlers of Melbourne were far removed in background and experience from their grandparents who had established Sydney. The 'fragment thesis' holds that colonial cultures are powerfully conditioned by the fragment of metropolitan culture which caused them to exist in the first place. The styles of economic development and political culture which typify Australia's two major cities are as divergent as those separating New York from Boston, Glasgow from Edinburgh, and St Petersburg from Moscow. The Sydney - Melbourne rivalry is equally intense as a result.(3) Briefly put, Sydney's politics have always been uncompromising, with a winner-take-all attitude to the spoils. Melbourne, the headquarters of both national trade unionism and the nation's conservative political party, has had a richer and more participatory political history. Sydney has had Tammany Hall and secret civilian militias; modem Melbourne is better known for its mass demonstrations and soap-box orators. This difference in political style can be explained by differences in social conflict between the two cities.

Sydney's elite made its money from the city's entrepot role in South-east Asia. As a commercial elite, it has always valued entrepreneurial skills ahead of liberal education, and Sydney's private school system is not well developed. Sydney's elite was also overwhelmingly Anglican, and its working class has historically been strongly Roman Catholic. Its two codes of Rugby correspondingly divide along class lines – the amateur Rugby Union developed in the 1870s while Rugby League, proletarian in its social base, emerged in conjunction with the development of working-class organisations towards the end of the nineteenth century. Sydney's Rugby competition started in earnest only in the early 1870s, and developed across the suburbs much more slowly than Melbourne's football competition, not reaching fully-fledged form until 1900. There was undoubtedly more scope for an aquatic culture to flourish in Sydney, with its abundance of harbours and bays. Sydney lacked a network of private schools - King's School (1831), Sydney Grammar (1857) and Newington College (1863) were the only major schools in colonial Sydney. It also lacked the wide open spaces of Melbourne's plains and Melbourne's flat terrain, necessary conditions for playing areas and transporting fans by cable-tram. Generous parklands and cheap transport fares were crucial to Australian football's early appeal. It has also been claimed that Sydney's elite was less skilled at the administration of sport.(4) This insight can be expressed in different terms: that for Sydney's gentry, sport was an exclusive rather than inclusive activity (dramatically so in the case of polo or yachting) and did not call for the same complexity of administration as mass sport.

The Melbourne story is quite different. Its elite was as much Presbyterian as Anglican in background, and more sympathetic to the possibility of self-improvement for the lower orders. Melbourne's initial growth was triggered by a massive influx of immigrants during the 1850s goldrush - this was a highly skilled and literate population with advanced political ideas. In Melbourne in 1856 organised labour won the right to an eight-hour working day, and other industrial or political reforms followed. Melbourne developed as a mercantile, financial and manufacturing centre - enterprises based on white-collar professions - and so prized more highly than Sydney the graduate skills developed through education. Melbourne life was dominated by schools such as Scotch College (1851), Geelong Grammar (1855), Melbourne Grammar (1858), Geelong College (1861), Wesley College (1866), and Xavier College (1878). Sydney remained a more international city, open to external influences, while Melbourne became a culturally closed city once the goldrush population settled down. Melbourne housed the Federal Parliament from 1901 to 1927, when Canberra was built Melbourne was fundamentally liberal: politically progressive, but socially conservative. At its heart Melbourne was a more inclusive city, and its own football code developed and grew as a Saturday afternoon recreation for players and spectators from all social classes. Rugby and Rules suited Sydney and Melbourne respectively because of these very different histories.






John Coleman was one of the most lethal goalkickers to play Australian Rules football, in a short career ended by serious knee injury. Coleman kicked 537 goals in only 98 games. (Football Life, May 1973, p. 26. Just Collectables!)



The connection between the culture of a city and its preference for one sport above another is to be found in the value of organised recreation for the onlookers and the participants alike. Team sports like football are a powerful metaphor for social conflict Each time a group of spectators watch a football match, they are looking at themselves mirrored in the play and learning something about their own lives. The sense of catharsis, of profound emotional release, which comes at the end of a football game, is the signal that some deeply significant reaffirmation of one's place in the larger social order has taken place. Organised sporting contests call up emotions as profound as that powerful sense of Good versus Evil in the ceremonies of organised religion. This larger link between a city and its game has within it a smaller link between the players and the coach: the players are us, the citizenry, and the coach embodies the wisdom of the game. Watching or playing a football match is not merely a technical exercise, it also engages us because the game contains meaning. The content of that meaning is to do with social conflict and struggle.

What exactly is the social struggle to which football refers? The two codes are quite different in appearance. One passionate observer gave this poetic description of Australian football: 'Aussie Rules is an exhilarating balletic spectacle, high-leaping artistry. The bladdery objet d'art is wrenched from the sky five metres up in a catatonic twist of the body... A magnificent pas de deux of man and ball terminating in a graceful somersault to the earth...' This spectator had a different impression of Rugby: 'Overdeveloped beef-cakes galumphing a few steps, in gangs of threes and fours, towards the obliteration of a witless plodder clutching with ten thumbs the oval pigskin to an ample belly...'(5) Stripped of its embellishments, this description conjures up the contrasting images of the two codes. The attraction of Rules is the athleticism and agility of individual players, while Rugby's appeal is rather more the strength and power of players working in groups. The laws governing each code preserve and regulate these fundamental differences between Rules and Rugby. The laws are refined and recodified according to arbitrary (that is, anthropological) principles. The laws can be (and are) changed and modified from one season to the next, but these refinements are undertaken by regulatory bodies which are mindful of community expectations and assumptions. A good example of this occurred at the conclusion of the 1993 season, when the Australian Football League (AFL) conducted a mail questionnaire of its members in order to test the popularity of proposed rule changes.


There are five basic laws governing Australian Rules which distinguish it from Rugby and reflect Melbourne's different social history.(6) A basic feature of the Australian game which puzzles aficionados of Rugby (and of English football) is the absence of an off-side rule. In cultural terms, no particular privilege attaches to those who are defending property. The off-side rule only makes sense if one presupposes that those who are defending their goal (for which read one's own property) should have some particular advantage. In cultural terms it is analogous to feudal assumptions about the inviolability of aristocratic land ownership. Before the emergence of capitalism, for land to change hands was the exception rather than the rule. Australian football, to the contrary, traces its cultural origins to mid-nineteenth-century laissez-faire capitalism, and presumes that defending teams in any kind of contest deserve no particular advantage.

Australian Rules differs from Rugby in a second respect. Its laws concentrate much more on ball-handling and rather less on man-to-man tackling. Kicking, marking and handballing are all features of the Australian game; the conventions controlling these aspects of the play have been carefully codified and consistently regulated to a far greater extent than the laws relating to shepherding, tackling and interfering with the movement of other players. It is in this man-to-man area that the greatest degree of ambiguity exists in Australian Rules. Exactly when an attempt to mark from behind another player concedes a free kick, to offer a notorious example, is inconsistently umpired. In short, the individual's actions with the ball provide the focus of the game - in terms of the political culture of Melbourne, this focus derives from the notion of the individual as a free agent which began to dominate Western discourse in the mid-nineteenth century. The triumph of individualism was at the expense of the estates, the earlier notion of society made up of collectivities, and it is this older view of social life that Rugby extols. Rugby's rules about man-on-man conflict are not nearly so ambiguous, and require the players to form scrums, line-outs and other group actions which give expression to the notion of collectivity.

Like the English and American codes of football, Rugby may be distinguished in another decisive way from Australian Rules, namely in its clear delineation of property. Property in the pre-capitalist mind-set is fixed and given, marked out in zones and in a rectangular field of precise dimensions. English football similarly presumes a regular pitch of invariant dimensions. Not so in Australian football: the playing field is oval and rather carelessly measured. Australian Rules fields of play vary quite considerably in terms of their length and width, depending in fact on how much open space had originally been allotted. This laissez-faire attitude to property reflects the assumptions of a post-feudal society, a key one of which is that land can be readily bought and sold. Similarly, the internal markings within the oval are a great deal less restrictive than the English and American equivalents. The Rugby field is uniformly 75 yards wide by 110 yards long, marked out with 10 and 25 yard lines; the internal dimensions vary slightly between Rugby League and Rugby Union, but they both operate on basically the same principles. Land is presumed to be finite, and the territory of Contest unchanging. Significantly, American baseball, which emerged in the 1840s in similar political conditions to those prevailing in Melbourne in the 1850s, shares with Australian Rules a careless indifference to the outer measurements of the field.

Then, perhaps most striking of all the contrasts, there is the fundamentally different attitude to authority in the Australian game. While the 'referee' in Rugby and in the English football game came to enjoy a send-off power, no such entitlement attaches to the 'umpire' in the Australian Rules context (at senior levels), and attempts to introduce it have always been resisted. The former case mimics the absolutist state, the latter the negotiability inherent in modem democratic societies. Once again, this curious difference can be traced back to colonial conditions in Melbourne - Australian Rules, after all, was codified only four years after the Eureka rebellion in Victoria. Umpires were added later and were given very limited powers. In the English case, adopted by Sydney, the state has an omnipresent authority; in the other, indigenously Australian variant, the whole point of the game sometimes appears to be the crowd's quarrel with the 'man-in-white'. Laws about many aspects of the Australian game, especially about free kicks, are almost perversely ambiguous. To make matters even more ambiguously democratic, the number of Australian umpires has been increased during successive periods, leading to shared rather than despotic decision-making.

Where this cultural analysis leads is to a provocative suggestion – that Melbourne's football game very deeply reflects the liberal social democratic milieu in which it was formed. The class struggle the game unobtrusively mirrors is one in which the contending forces are engaged in hegemonic struggle rather than knock-down battle. There is no fixed centre, there is a curious interweaving of the two teams, and the players move as interdependent individuals. In the other codes, notably in the case of Sydney's Rugby, battle is joined on either side of a centre line, and the underlying motif is brute force. Each team operates as a bloc rather than as a group of individuals. The social struggle reflects conditions in pre-industrial Britain and the early years of the penal colony in New South Wales. Early Rugby was closely associated with the military regiments based in Sydney.(7) It is a game enjoyed mostly by people who believe that life's essential struggle is one of force, and who live in a city whose political life is built around the same assumptions. In the terms of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, the Sydney Rugby style is a triumph of dominio (coercion), Melbourne's football a contest around egemonia (consent).

Sydney's international outlook has opened it to the world. Appropriately, the only successful indigenous game produced in Australia developed in the rather more inward-looking manufacturing city which grew up further south fifty years later.

This broad-brush comparison between Rugby and Rules can be used to explain many other features of the codes. Women are far more numerous in a Rules crowd because the game belongs to an era of greater participation by women in the struggle between the haves and the have-nots. Also, the rule changes permitted in each code over the intervening decades tended to reinforce rather than challenge the basic cultural assumptions in each game. The role of the umpire in Australian Rules, for example, has consistently been made ambiguous and contestable due to the number of changes to the rules governing 'free kicks'. For it to be otherwise would be to concede to the state an absolutism which the citizens of goldrush Victoria found repugnant. The laws of the games are inherently conservative and help to fossilise the cultural meanings embedded in each game. We now turn to examine those laws of Rules more carefully.





©Robert Pascoe 1995

Published in The Winter Game. The Text Publishing Company, Melbourne, Australia, 1995 (pp. xi-xvii).







Notes



1 Throughout what follows, except where it is obvious, the term Rugby is used to include both Rugby (Union) and Rugby League. Usually football refers to Australian Rules football, as played or codified from time to time.

2 Ian Turner, 'The Ron Barassi Memorial Lecture 1978', in Game Hutchinson, The Great Australian Book of Football Stories, 1983, p. 290.

3 Jim Davidson, ed., The Sydney-Melbourne Book is the definitive summary of this complicated story. The chapter comparing sporting traditions is by Brian Stoddart. Refer also to the work of Lionel Frost in comparing the various Australian colonies, Australian Cities in Comparative View, McPhee Gribble, Ringwood, Vic., 1990.

4 Richard Cashman and Tom Hickie, 'The divergent sporting cultures of Sydney and Melbourne', Sporting Traditions, vol. 7, no. 1, November 1990, pp. 26-46; see also M. P. Sharp, 'Australian football in Sydney before 1914', Sporting Traditions, vol. 4, no. 1, November 1987, pp.27-45.

5 Frank Hainsworth, Letter to the Editor, The Age, Melbourne, 3 June 1993, p.14.

6 These five basic differences figure strongly in the April 1994 television campaign ('I'd like to see that!') to promote Rules in Sydney and Brisbane (Herald-Sun, Melbourne, 6 April 1994, p. 5).

7 Thomas V. Hickie, They Ran with the Ball.

Excellent essay and I find nothing in there to disagree with, but it's very obvious that it's written by somebody from Melbourne with an Aussie Rules background. It's clear that the author doesn't understand the grassroots language and culture of the other codes fully, apart from a superficial level. But he still does well.

 

[Hawkk]

Excellent essay and I find nothing in there to disagree with, but it's very obvious that it's written by somebody from Melbourne with an Aussie Rules background. It's clear that the author doesn't understand the grassroots language and culture of the other codes fully, apart from a superficial level. But he still does well.

The only way to judge is by which is mostly supported.
Therefore Australian Rules is the most Australian, as it is the most supported game in Australia.
League would probably be 3rd behind cricket.

My order of Australian Sports are-
1.Aussie Rules-generates alot of passion, very emotional,tribal(Australias equivilent of English soccer)

2.Cricket-generally supported well across the country.Doesnt produce same numbers and passion of Aussie Rules.

3.League-Very big still in NSW and to a certain extent in Queensland(Not to a massive extent in South East but still is big in Northern Queensland)In general doesnt generate any where near the passion of AFL, but generates just as much in State of Origin-if not as bigger then most inner Mebourne rivalries.(the equivilent of Carlton and Collingwood)

4.Union-doesnt generate as much passion as any other then Bledisloe.Which is the equivlent of Carlton and Collingwood and State of Origin in terms of between supporters.

In general the follow codes represent these socio economic groups.

AFL-all groups in Victoria,SA,TAS,WA,Northern Territory and now is getting alittle of the Queensland market.

League-Middle-Lower-in NSW and Queensland

Union-Upper-Middle-in NSW and Queensland

From my experience there has always been more of a rivalry between Union and League to gain the support of those very import Middle Class.

When this is achieved each will be the 2nd most Australian football code.

btw, its true that Aussie Rules generates an english soccer like passion.
As a English friend of mine who came out from the UK earlier this year told me, and we are living in Queensland, thus the maintitude of the comment.

 

[PA HOG]

You forgot the dunking the winning coach with Gatorade™

Not to mention having the National Anthem "rendered" by a pop singer..............badly!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Illawarrior]

Australian Rules Football is far more popular in it's "non traditional" areas than Rugby League is in its non-traditional areas. In some areas of southern New South Wales, such as Wagga, the split between the codes is about 50-50 (give or take.) You can't say the same about any location in regional Victoria. Aussie Rules is far bigger in SE Qld than Rugby League is in Victoria.



Cricket is not the most loved sport in the country at all. Whilst it is "equal" in all parts of the country, it only really has major interst at the International level. The Pura Cup is effectively State of Origin, yet struggles to get 1,000 to a days play. The Australian team gets 50,000 to a one day international, yet they have the whole country behind the team. Essendon and Collingwood, who represent about 30% of Victoria only, can get 80,000 to one game.

Imagine if Cricket was not international and was only played "within" Australia, domestically. There would be next to no interest. It's somewhat comparable to Soccer in this country. The Socceroos can pack out the MCG but the domestic competition has limited interest.

What really tests the interest level of a sport is NOT the international level (because, let's face it, anything is big at International level) but the bread and butter of the domestic home and away competition. The AFL is the second biggest crowd drawing league in the world behind the NFL, and the AFL represents the highest level of Australian Rules football, which is clearly the nation's number one supported game.

AFL is accepted in NSW and QLD as a sport because it is promoted and the people don't fear it. The same cannot be said for Melbourne, while SA and WA don't have teams anymore - hence no tv coverage.

And the big test of a national sport is it TV ratings. League consistently beats Aussie Rules in this area but it would be stupid for the NRL to claim to be the national football code. Neither is. They are two halves of the same puzzle.

 

[Hurbie]

Where does NZ (What? Abandoned federation in 1898?) and South Australia fit into Robert Pascoes ideas?

I personally think both don't work within his cultural framework. I certainly think he has a valid point on culture, but the idea of liberalist compromise driven Victorians and Queen loving New South Welshmen doesn't exactly hold up once you leave the borders.

 

[happy hawker]

And the big test of a national sport is it TV ratings. League consistently beats Aussie Rules in this area but it would be stupid for the NRL to claim to be the national football code. Neither is. They are two halves of the same puzzle.

Eh?

What ratings are you looking at?

Week in week out national AFL ratings are a lot higher then the nRL's national ratings.

So I guess AFL wins your "big test" of a national sport.

 

[Scrumhalf]

The next dropkick who refers Rugby League as "Rugby", I will mentally hurt you.

 

[happy hawker]

The next dropkick who refers Rugby League as "Rugby", I will mentally hurt you.

[MISCHIEVOUS]

Does this mean the nRL should be the nRLL?

[/MISCHIEVOUS]

 

[The Hitman]

As with everyone else, I agree the answer is AFL, but for a different reason than the "because rugby league is played overseas" that most have said.

Australian Rules was created and was developed in Australia. Rugby used to be one game born out of the Rugby School in England, before the lower class English rugby players broke away and made some rule changes which led to the rugby league version of the game.

Like soccer, golf and cricket, the English are very good at creating sports, exporting them and then getting beaten at them. Rugby league is just another example.

If Australian Rules was played at a fairly competitive level overseas and there were internationals, it would still be a more Australian game, because it is the only successful sport (bar perhaps Australian Crawl - or freestyle - swimming) that was made in Australia.

The Hitman

 

[Scrumhalf]

[MISCHIEVOUS]

Does this mean the nRL should be the nRLL?

[/MISCHIEVOUS]

NRLL, go & ask the rowdy League folk and see if they have a problem with that.

Rugby League calls their league, "The National (?) Rugby League" because they are enabled to do so. As they are entitled to use the word "League" primarily in reference to their own game.

Rugby League competitions
- National (?) Rugby League
- New South Wales Rugby League
- Queensland Rugby League
- New Zealand Rugby League

As for Rugby; you don't see them referring anything to the word "league". They don't use the word "league" in reference to their domestic competitions & so forth. Hence this is their way of distincting themselves from Rugby League. See? It's not so confusing once you actually understand their differences.

Rugby Union competitions
- The Super 12 Rugby Championships (AUS)
- The Tooheys New Rugby Premiership (AUS)
- The National Provincial Championship (NZ)
- Nihon Company Rugby Championship (Japan)
- The Currie Cup Championship (RSA)
- Zurich Premiership Rugby (England)
- National Rugby Championship (France)

Rugby Union: RUGBY
Rugby League: LEAGUE

 

[Karbassiyoon]

rugby league or rugby union - i don't care what is rugby and whats not, as long as it doesn't get called "football" or "footy"

foooodbollll = soccer
footy / football = australian rules
footbOawl = grid iron

 

[puddingfactor]

Are you going to footnote BigFooty in your uni assignment?

Now that's a frightening reflection on Australia's tertiary institutions.

 

[Scrumhalf]

rugby league or rugby union - i don't care what is rugby and whats not, as long as it doesn't get called "football" or "footy"

foooodbollll = soccer
footy / football = australian rules
footbOawl = grid iron

Rugby Union all around the world is referred only to as "Rugby". Nothing more.

Rugby Union in Australia prides itself as being called "Rugby" and it will keep promoting itself to do so. None of that "Football" or "Union" rubbish.

If you have a problem with other codes calling itself "Football/Footy" (besides Soccer & American "Football"), you might want to consult Rugby League & their followers.

 

[Karbassiyoon]

i think the superior sport should get the tag 'rugby'

so IMO league should be rugby, and union should be union

and people who disagree should just have thugby and rugby

 

[Fire Storm]

Thugby meaning AFL, Ted? More thugs play AFL then RU and RL combined.


AFL is an english gamed derived from Gaylec footy. Everyone knows it. Dreamers.

 

[LebaneseForces]

Isn't AFL a mexican invented and dominated sport JKS...

 

[Aucklander]

Rugby League competitions
- National (?) Rugby League
- New South Wales Rugby League
- Queensland Rugby League
- New Zealand Rugby League

You've got one right and one partly right at least. Not a bad effort under the circumstances.

In Queensland the comp is called the Queensland Cup, while in New Zealand it's, the Bartercard Cup.

 

[dogsbody]

Isn't AFL a mexican invented and dominated sport JKS...

Its umpires come from Mars.

 

[littleduck]

And the big test of a national sport is it TV ratings. League consistently beats Aussie Rules in this area but it would be stupid for the NRL to claim to be the national football code. Neither is. They are two halves of the same puzzle.

True, neither is a truly national football code meaning neither can claim to be "the national football code" of choice for Australians". You're right, they are 2 halves of the same puzzle.