The Age

The Age's inferiority complex regarding AFL reaches new heights of ridiculousness in this front page article.

A few days ago the Age were printing 5am specials celebrating Australia's wins in the 'soccer' world cup now they are doing the very predictable 'we only watched it because there was no AFL on' rubbish.

Just because football is the most popular and most watched sport in the world does not mean the tiny niche sport of AFL is threatened. They can both co-exist perfectly well, even in Melbourne. Articles as pathetic as this only show up the inherent insecurity of the AFL journalists of the Melbourne press - as does the name of the mini site on which this article is hosted, 'realfooty.com' and indeed the headline of the article itself: "'our' football returns".

63,000 people turned up to watch Collingwood V Richmond on the weekend. The sport is very popular (in Melbourne) and deservedly so - it has a rich history and is followed passionately by millions. About that number stayed up till 3am and braved the cold to watch Australia V Italy on big screens across Australia. Just because one is hogging the headlines does not mean the other is 'threatened'. We all know that Melburnians love their footy, we've been told a billion times. Enough already.