Forget the working stadia already in place and that Tasmania already plays AFL. No stadium, no team, the AFL said. Tasmanians disagree, as Binoy Kampmark reports.
Australian Football League (AFL)
Between 6000-7000 people protested in front of Parliament House to say “no” to a new football stadium — costing $715 million — in the heart of the waterfront. Robynne Murphy reports.
Suzanne James asks why the Australian Football League is so racist and, with clubs raking in billions in multi-stream revenue, why are taxpayers funding them?
Nearly one in 25 young people have a problem with gambling, and teenagers are four times more likely to develop gambling problems than adults. Darren Saffin reports.
Goodes’ story shows that racism is well and truly alive.
The decision by the Australian Football League (AFL) to refuse to allow transgender woman Hannah Mouncey to nominate for the Australian Football League Women (AFLW) draft has drawn widespread criticism as a reflection of the AFL’s lack of real commitment to inclusion.
Aboriginal AFL star Leon Davis has backed up the allegations made by his former Collingwood teammate Heritier Lumumba about racism inside the club, saying he “shared his pain and grief” as a Black man.
Heritier Lumumba, the retired Brazilian-Congolese AFL star, has described Collingwood as a “boys’ club for racist and sexist jokes” in comments reported by the media ahead of the August 27 screening of the SBS documentary Fair Game. Lumumba played 199 games for Collingwood between 2005-14.
Of course, die-hard misogynist and self-confessed Donald Trump fan Sam Newman was hostile to the AFL Women’s (AFLW) league infamously calling it “unbelievably stupid and ridiculous” on Channel Nine’s The Footy Show.
It turns out plenty think otherwise.
Thousands of protesters converged on central Melbourne on September 7, marching through the CBD and blocking traffic at key intersections to support sacked brewery workers.
In the latest escalation of the dispute, unions are demanding the AFL pressure Carlton & United Breweries, one of its major sponsors, to meet the workers and to re-engage them immediately at full wages and conditions, or "face a CUB beer-free footy finals season".
Twenty-five per cent of Australian Rules football players are now women and girls, a figure that has doubled in the past five years. From February next year, eight new women's teams will compete in a national, six-round, AFL competition. Announcing the women's league last month, AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick said it would “change the game forever, [… uneasy pause …] for the good”.
The year-long vilification of Aboriginal AFL star Adam Goodes should not be trivialised and dismissed as simply ignorance or mob mentality. This is a valuable opportunity to reflect on race relations in Australia and the ways racism is perpetuated.
After taking a brief break in the face of sustained booing that dogged him whenever he took to the field, the Sydney Swans star returned to the game for the Swans August 8 win over Geelong. The Geelong crowd warmly welcomed Goodes in a public demonstration of all that is humane and open-hearted in the Australian public.
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