Jan 14 2008
More Aussie-American Crossover Fun
Saverio Rocca may not have had the bang-up season many of us were expecting him to have in Philadelphia, but that hasn’t stopped other Australian football players from giving the NFL a shot.
VICTORIAN NFL aspirants Stephen Paulke and Finbar Simpson will take the first step to realising their dream of becoming American footballers at a prestigious camp in the US next week.
Paulke, 18, and Simpson, 20, have been invited to attend the Chris Sailer annual national kicking event in Las Vegas from January 12.
No word on whether or not they were offered a football scholarship out of that, but it was funny to hear Simpson say, “There is no real future for gridiron in Australia.” Clearly, they have enough football codes down under. Who needs one more?
Maybe America does. While Australian kickers are heading this way, a few American kids who play Aussie rules appear to be heading to Australia. World Footy News reported on two brothers from Wisconsin who will join the West Perth Falcons of the Western Australia Football League. They’re still reserve players at that level, but one of them is looking to break into the senior team this season.
Has the USAFL really gotten that good at developing footy players in this country? Is it possible that we’ll see more Americans playing state-league footy in Australia in the next decade? Might we even see an American in the AFL one day?
I suspect that will be more likely if the AFL could gain more of a foothold on American TV. We’ll need to see that before we see that footy stadium in L.A. that Kevin Sheedy wants.
16 Responses to “More Aussie-American Crossover Fun”
There was an article link on the American National Rugby League website last year about an American gridiron player going over to Australia to try out for an NRL farm club.
This sort of thing is happening in all sorts of sports, not just Aussie punters in the NFL, but even Aussie baseball players in MLB, and of course Americans playing soccer everywhere, Aussies in the USA spreading knowledge of Aussie rules and rugby league, Indians and others playing cricket in the USA, it’s bound to happen that these sports pick up some kind of American following.
Looking at how much resistance soccer gets to getting any media coverage in the USA, it’s hard to see how more obscure sports are going to get any coverage, though.
I think there is some possibility someone will with major bank will see Aussie rules and either setup their own comp in America or buy out whole USAFL clubs – throw some dollars at 6 AFL guys per team to join the clubs from Australia and try and setup a televised league possibly with altered rules and fields. They would try and make it a personality based hard hitting, featuring the no pads warriors – ala wrestling.
In any case it will take major $$s and television to make Aussie rules have any decent profile in America.
The AFL is trying very hard to “GROW” the game and brand and America is a huge and lucrative market that if they can grab some small part of the market share in the US I think it would be huge for the AFL.
As the AFL are doing in South Africa where they have over 8000 kids enrolled in Auskick they should probably look at something similar in the US maybe. AFL clubs have what is called a scholarship list where they are able to have players from 15 to 23 years of age on the list for as little as $20 000 a year which will be used for schooling. I am sure there is some incentive there for the American kids.
The more American people that come over to play and spread the word on how great our game is then we might just see an increase in American players, just like we have seen with the Irish.
ando: Sounds like AFL clubs are starting to offer “football scholarships” to foreign nationals — just like colleges in America. Interesting…
I hate to rain on the parade of you marngrook football fans, but plenty of billionaires have thrown away a lot of money in the USA already trying to promote new leagues in already established USA sports with that “extreme” or “pro wrestling” edge. XFL is one example. It doesn’t work.
MLS tried this a while. Now they are realizing you have to respect the history and traditions of the game if you want to attract American soccer fans. Turning the sport into a freakshow isn’t going to attract enough fans who will stick around for the long term.
You don’t really want to see your sport turned into a WWF or XFL freakshow. The long and slow process of building local clubs is the only process that really works, long term.
Rugby union in the USA has finally reached the level soccer achieved about 40 or 50 years ago. I don’t see how any other sport is going to leapfrog that long foundation-laying process.
I don’t think creating a pro Aussie Rules league in America is the goal. I think the goal is to get the AFL on American TV and continue building the grass roots movement as it is. Starting a new league here isn’t going to work, but promoting the existing league in Australia is another matter entirely.
My point is this: The Premier League has a large TV following. Why couldn’t the AFL do the same?
Well, I remember when the VFL was on ESPN back in the 1980’s. It created some mild curiosity, but it did not get enough ratings to justify the costs.
You are forgetting that there was already a massive group of soccer fans in the USA that was totally unserved by the marketplace, waiting for when soccer became available on TV. Thus we now have FSC, GolTV, Setanta, and Champions League on ESPN. That’s easy money for the networks.
AFL is another matter entirely. There is no large, untapped fanbase out there for AFL football in the USA. You have to build that fanbase up first before AFL could actually make serious money in the USA. There’s a reason why AFL is on Setanta (which is only available in the USA on DirecTV satellite) and not on ESPN or Fox.
I wish that were not the case, because I, like you, like variety in my sports. Unfortunately, we are not typical.
dave: Point taken on the lack of an Aussie rules fan base in America, but even so, 1980 and 2007 are very different eras for both TV and Aussie Rules. There are a lot more niche channels out there than ever before, and given some of the crap that makes it on to them, you would think there’s an opportunity here for the AFL to make an inroad and reintroduce their game to the world — and there’s no better occasion for it than the code’s 150th anniversary.
Then again, maybe they don’t need TV. Maybe if they had a better deal for show live and replay matches over the web, like SerieA.TV does, they could gauge how big their audience really is over here.
Maybe I’m just being the eternal optimist here because I think people would really enjoy the Australian game if they gave it a try. I sure did.
[...] if it could grab a small piece of the market share of the US sports market. There has been a bit of tallk about the possibilities of more Americans coming “Down Under” to try their hand at our game, and given the AFL have a scholarship list that enable clubs to have [...]
ando I dont think the AFL is trying very hard to grow the game in the US. All efforts so far have pretty much grown up from either expats or curious American keen for something different. Those developing the game locally have asked for assistance, which has come in a very limited form from the AFL. They have not been proactive in giving the game away to be shown in the US on TV either, it really has been a low priority for them in the past.
I am not saying that a pro league will happen and that someone will throw money at it, just that it could happen and would be the best chance for the game to take off there (albeit in a limited way).
Stephen Paulke has been offered a division 1, full-ride scholarship after his first weekend competing in the US as a punter. I won’t name the college as he still has 2 weeks left in the US and potentially more offers on the table. Stay tuned.
Ronald
No doubt it would be a hard market o break into and the AFL haven’t really tried to hard in the US, but do you think there would be enough interest? I just reckon there would be amazing athletes there that clubs here could take a punt on that may have an impact in the AFL?
ando: The athletes are here, no question, but they don’t really know about Aussie Rules. IMHO, if they can get it on a U.S. TV network, whether it be Vs. or Spike or even the bloody Travel Channel — they can get more people interested in playing it.
People are playing footy here. It’s just a matter of spreading the word about it.
Perhaps one should put the AFL existing fanbase in the USA in a bit more perspective. Don’t compare the fanbase to soccer; compare it to rugby union and cricket.
There are already enough rugby union and cricket fans in the USA for it to be worthwhile for the satellite and cable companies to provide pay per view for important international test matches in both sports.
Have VFL/AFL matches ever been offered on pay per view? To the best of my knowledge it has only been offered as “filler” on networks already offering other sports, ie, ESPN in the 1980’s, Fox Sports World (predecessor of Fox Soccer Channel) and now Setanta.
If so, there’s apparently not yet enough of an AFL audience in the USA to support pay per view, and AFL has only been piggy-backing on other networks devoted to other sports. In other words, if cheap enough, AFL has been picked up by obscure networks looking for material to fill up their empty schedule, and not because there were enough existing fans in the USA who actually would pick up that network just to get the AFL.
Rugby union and cricket have relatively small, but significant, American audiences (thanks in part to recent immigration), which have helped them establish a small foothold in the USA that IMO AFL doesn’t have yet. And this small foothold is tiny compared to soccer’s foothold here, and we all know how far soccer still has to go in the USA.
So putting it all in perspective, if soccer is a first tier “not yet mainstream sport” in the USA, rugby union and cricket are second tier behind soccer, and AFL is third tier behind that.
Rugby league would also be third tier in the “not yet mainstream sport in the USA” category; like AFL it has a small fanbase in the USA and given its similarities to rugby union and gridiron, it has an even easier time attracting crossover fans and players. But it’s still pretty obscure, like AFL.
Also I should add, if you are willing to pay extra for the French language channels, you can watch rugby union, at least on my local Comcast. You can also get some cricket shows on some of the Indian/south Asian channels which you have to pay extra for. There’s nothing like this kind of specialized programming for Aussie expats here in the USA, unfortunately, so no AFL or NRL coverage, apart from Setanta.
If anyone has done thier research there have already been at least 2 players from the USA playing in the AFL. one for the bears and one in the late 90’s early naughts at Essedon.