OUT OF MY LEAGUE

People often ask me, who I’d have in my world footy dream team. Would I get all nostalgic and combine the raging bull, Wayne Rooney with his ex Cristiano Ronaldo aka The Gelled One aka Mr CR7? Would I stick with experience down the back and give Maldini one more year? What about the midfield? Let’s face it, Zidane was always good with his head. Very difficult.

Of course, I also have to consider how to make the team marketable as I want everyone coming to see them play so that I can leave all the other codes and anything involving the Royal family bereft of any support on the weekend.

So I think laterally, maybe a bit inappropriately, but it’s my dream team and I decide I’ll include The Corrs – hot, Shakira-hot, Pippa Middleton –relevant but not royal and Posh Spice because I need some experience and media savvy in there.

Of course, it wouldn’t work and I might even be insulting the hard core fans for I haven’t really seen any of these people play the game, though Posh does spectate well and I’ve heard the drummer from The Corrs can keep. Given my line up there’s even a chance I could fast track the whole Western Sydney move as surely Super Tim would come back to play with Pippa.

As we are always told, we live in competitive times and, as were are also always told, we need to think strategically: KPIs, long term, short term, medium term goals, recognising and responding to our core business, expanding, consolidating, blah de blah de blah. Did I mention market identity?

In terms of identity,  I know that with the A League season kicking off and making a cracker start with Emo and Harry coming back and the Roar on absolute fire that “We are football”, but it’s also at this time of year that International Rules circus rolls in and I get confused about who the other code is. Are they still “Real Footy” now?

Frankly, apart from gathering a few of the game’s legends and kitting them out in the same gear, I have never understood why  you would take a dream team of Aussie Rule footballers and make them play a made up game and really think they’ll take it seriously.  

Now this is not about the players and their ability to stay competitive no matter what the code. It’s not even about Aussie Rules as a sport. Only a fool would deny the commitment of the players or the dominance and popularity of Aussie rules. It is about identity and core values and maybe even respecting your market, not to mention the green and gold guernsey.

Surely, when you create a hybrid game based on a bit of what’s yours and a bit of what’s theirs, you are ultimately devaluing the very thing that defines you? International Rules is a curious idea and I guess it does build a bit of a bridge between cultures; let’s face it when we hurt the Irish by going in hard, everyone knows we really care. Even a headlock can be about love, can’t it?

As a kid who was raised playing “soccer” and trained with my Carlton jumper, I could never understand that unique time in the year when some of my favourite footy stars took to a field with a round ball and a goal with a net. While Silvagni in goals seemed somewhat appropriate, the rest made no sense; I never really did care about the actual game and pretty much forgot about it until that murky time popped up again the following year and again and again.

Maybe it was and is all about fun and games, but do you risk your credibility as a code when you reach for a watered down common denominator so that you can affirm your own identity and keep your place in the market in the off season? What’s more, do you threaten your own marketability when things go wrong? Remember when Fevolution blew a fuse??

Let’s be real, any International Rules series is about trying to make Aussie rules something it’s not. Unlike rugby or basketball or soccer (because sometimes their people don’t like it when we use the proper name for it), Aussies rules does not have global appeal and so you just can’t represent your country in the same way. As an outsider, it reads like a desperate lunge at a green and gold strip and another take on the end of season trip.

To my mind, as long as the game played is made up and meaningless, the credibility you hope to harness from it will be dubious and there is no emotional value at all invested in the green and gold colours.

Of course, it might just be about the cash.

Should that be a core value?

Vinnie Venezuela