Australian Football

Football history: let's have more facts and less propaganda

In an ideal world, history would present us with a picture of the past that was accurate and verifiable, based on facts. However, as everyone knows, history is written by the winners, who all too often regard it, not as the intellectual and moral challenge it ought to be, but merely as a tool to bolster their own position. History in the hands of the empire builder almost invariably degenerates into propaganda, with the facts being magnified, distorted or ignored, depending on the circumstances.

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A classic recent example of this has been the AFL’s depiction of the history of Australian football, which hinges on the deliberately concocted myth that today’s AFL and the VFL of yore are essentially the same beast. The AFL would like to be perceived as having been a truly national organisation for a good deal longer than it actually has – to be, if you like, Australia’s equivalent of Major League Baseball in America, or the elite soccer leagues of western Europe. Given that the AFL has effectively acquired control over every aspect of the football industry, the actual facts of the matter can be cheerfully ignored.

So what are those facts?

For a start, football’s present day pyramidal structure, with the AFL at its apex, is a comparatively recent development. For most of the twentieth century, each state or territory, including Victoria , had its own pyramid, topped by an elite competition. In states where football was the main winter sport, the fundamental differences between those elite competitions were quantitative rather than qualitative, although the fact that Victoria had many more footballers to draw upon than any other state obviously had potential qualitative implications as well (or, to put it another way, the more footballers you have, the more good ones there are likely to be).

This is light years away from suggesting that the elite competition in Victoria, the VFL, had a complete monopoly on the best talent in the nation. Quite simply, it didn’t, and there are hard facts to back this up. Let’s start by comparing the composition of modern AFL teams with their VFL counterparts of the past. In order to compare like with like as closely as possible, we’ll use a couple of premierships won half a century apart by Essendon. When the Bombers beat Melbourne in the 2000 grand final their team comprised eleven players who were recruited locally, four from country regions of Victoria, and seven from interstate.

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Michael Long

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For comparison, let’s look at the Bombers’ flag-winning team of 1950. Who were the equivalents of Michael Long, Darren Bewick and Sean Wellman back then? The simple answer is – nobody. The entire Essendon team of 1950 was Victorian, comprising sixteen local and four country recruits. Similarly, their opponents, North Melbourne , boasted an entirely Victorian line-up. Where then were the interstate stars? The same place they had been since football’s earliest days, and the same place they would, with a few exceptions, remain for many more years – interstate.

The fact that top level football was not restricted to Melbourne, and that the very best players could equally be found, if in smaller numbers, in SA, WA or Tasmania was something that the football public, journalists and players of yesteryear were well aware of, but which, for obvious reasons, the AFL of today would like to play down. Thus, for example, you get:

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* legendary Geelong defender Reg Hickey, who was opposed during his VFL career by the likes of Bob Pratt, Gordon Coventry, Laurie Nash, Jack Titus, Harry Vallence, Bill Mohr and Ron Todd, naming Harold ‘Dribbler’ Hawke of North Adelaide as the finest centre half forward he ever faced;

* Essendon’s triple All Australian centreman Jack Clarke calling East Fremantle ’s RaySorrell “the best centreman I ever saw”;

* Jock McHale’s Collingwood giving pride of place in their clubrooms to a portrait of South Adelaide’s Jack Tredrea, as a mark of respect for an opponent that so many players at the club admired;

* South Adelaide wingman Wally Allen being acclaimed by the Melbourne press as “champion of the year” after a sensational display for South Australia against Victoria on the MCG in 1920;

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Dan Moriarty

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* Allen’s South Adelaide teammate Dan Moriarty being widely feted as “the best footballer in the Commonwealth” after the 1921 Perth carnival;

* Richmond champion Jack Dyer describing Jack Broadstock, who spent the vast majority of his playing career in the SANFL, as “the most talented footballer I have ever seen”.

History may, indeed, always be written by the winners, but for that very reason it’s always worth questioning.