Kevin Sheedy's Attack on 'Un-Australian' Wanderers

Normally I am loathe to watch or even discuss the Australian Modified Gaelic Football League and the newest club, the Greater Wagga-Wagga Canberra Western Sydney Breakfast Point Giants. Today I am over-turning that self-imposed ban due to the comments of Kevin Sheedy at the press-conference following his team's abysmal 135 point loss. I did not watch the game, knowing that even if I were to enjoy AMGFL in the slightest that this match would not be a contest whatsoever. The match attracted a laughably inflated 'official' crowd of 5,830. I can only assume this included the players and coaches for both teams, the staff selling food and drinks to patrons, the face painter out the front of the stadium and the commentators and broadcast staff, and then the AFL decided to double the figure. Perhaps their membership base of 12,052 contains far more cats, dogs, pigs and infant children than we would otherwise suspect.

After discussing the team and their woeful ability on the field, the topic turned to the way the club had gone about the business of attracting people and building a support base. Kevin Sheedy then made a comment I found incredibly offensive, one that shows that the days of the 'Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters' branding of football in this country are not yet over.

"We don't have the recruiting officer called the immigration department, recruiting fans for the West Sydney Wanderers. We have to find fans, because that's what happens when you channel a lot of people into a country, put them in Western Sydney, build a club in one year and they've suddenly got 10,000 fans and 20,000 going to a game."

What a staggering stupid, and arguably racist comment. It is one that shows yet again what complete ignorance the AMGFL leadership have of the people they supposedly want to support their new club.

I hardly know where to begin dissecting the failure of the GWS Giants.

Firstly, I remind all that the AFL have repeatedly talked about having a $200 million dollar 'war chest' for the Giants. So my first question, is why has any Government spent any money on this failure of a club?

I will start with the AFL scamming $27 million dollars from various parts of NSW Government to build a ground at the Blacktown Olympic Park, only to see them abandon the facility in order to waste another $45 million of taxpayer funds on redeveloping the Sydney Showground. Skoda Stadium as it is now known, has only once attracted more than the 10,000 that the Blacktown AFL stadium can hold.

I could also start with how the ACT Government has gifted GWS with $2.35 million a year for 10 years to play matches at Manuka Oval. And here I was thinking this was a Western Sydney team. What I find most aggravating for this in regards to football, is that the Canberra A-League bid failed due to a lack of funding, even though $2.35 million a year would be enough to cover any losses of a real ACT team playing in Canberra for every match of the A-League season!

Sheedy and his comment today proved to me without a shadow of a doubt that the AFL & GWS have no clue about the people they want to market their sport and club at.

If they think that the Western Sydney Wanderers success is solely down to of 'immigrants' coming over to Australia that are 'channeled' into Western Sydney by the Government, bringing their immigrant sport that just happens to be what the Wanderers play thus setting the scene for sold-out crowds and a Grand Final with over 40,000 people at it then they are dead wrong.

It is another comment in the litany of AFL supporters who brand Football as anti-Australia, as a foreign xenophobic sport not fit for a 'true Australian' to play. It is an statement that football is "Un-Australian".

This is a sport which is so intent on forcefully branding itself as a true Australian 'legend'. From attempts to takeover Anzac Day, to claiming that AFL is the 'indigenous' game despite said game being a combination of rugby & Gaelic football (Sheedy should look up what country Association Football came from), and the deception of calling it "Australia's Game", despite football being a far more popular participation sport for males, swimming being popular with both male and female and netball being most popular with females.

Never mind the tiny little fact that half the country prefers Rugby or Rugby Union, and the entire country supports Cricket in various forms, the AFL has grown complacent in having the narratives and marketing spiel replicated word for word across the mainstream media. It has grown so confident that it now has it's own propaganda empire operating under the guise of 'AFL.Com News'.

Sheedy has bought into the AFL hype about being the true Australian sport. To him and the rest of the stooges at AFL Headquarters, the success of the Wanderers can only be explained away by declaring those Wanderers supporters as immigrants, not truly Australian. They can't possible be real Australian men and women, because they'd be Giants supporters otherwise. The Giants see their job as preaching the Australian gospel of AFL to those immigrant football heathens. That AFL is the one true Australian sport, and we'd best come along and support his team if we want really be Australian.

Whichever way his comment is sliced it is offensive. His suggestion that because I'm a Wanderers supporter I must be an immigrant is just one way I find it offensive. That being born in Western Sydney, with my parents being born in Western Sydney and my grandparents as well, that supporting the Wanderers and not supporting GWS makes me an un-Australian immigrant.

The alternative? That people who immigrate to Australia and love football aren't really Australian yet, or that they are invading Australia and latching on to the Wanderers because they haven't yet found out they should love AFL.

Bullshit.

Kevin Sheedy your comments are a disgrace not only to Western Sydney but to modern Australian culture as a whole. This country is built on immigration, and people come to Australia to live and learn and be free, they can love or hate whatever sport they like and liking one sport or another has nothing to do with how 'Australian' they are.

The Wanderers have built their success and fan base not from 'immigration', but from passion for football, and getting our chance to support a club that truly represents Western Sydney in the A-League. No-one in the Wanderers club or support base cares how long ago you moved to Australia, or even if you were born in Australia, or if it was 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 or more generations ago that your family first came to Australia, or if you're from Eastern Europe, or South America, or New Zealand or England or Greece or Spain or Aboriginal or any other country or nationality or ethnicity on the planet.

Nationality or ethnicity isn't what unites the Wanderers. It has nothing to do with our immigration or non-immigration status.

What unites the Wanderers is being proud of Western Sydney.

If Kevin Sheedy and the AFL can't understand that they can take the entire Giants organisation on the next XPT to Canberra and relocate the entire box and dice to a location that appears to actually want an AFL team.

Update:
I have obtained a statement from the GWS organisation, signed by chairman Tony Shepherd.

I first note that to GWS, if you want to be taken seriously, you should adopt local convention and start calling our sport "Football", while you use the common term "AFL". Football in Western Sydney is Football. I've also noticed a tendency to call both forms of Rugby solely "Rugby", instead of Rugby Union and Rugby League. Differentiating those two codes would be appreciated also.

Our sport is Football, and it is run by Football Federation Australia.

Please pass this on to your colleagues in Melbourne.

After filtering out marketing spiel, it contains only one paragraph that refers to his comments:

His comments were not new. It is something he has expressed a number of times but unfortunately on this occasion they were taken out of context and he has been unfairly subjected to criticism by some people who may not be aware of Kevin's enormous contribution to the community.

I care about his recent statement, his xenophobic comments that the Immigration Department is recruiting for the Wanderers. Not any 'enormous' contribution to the community in the past. It has nothing to do with his current statement and the current issue of GWS and their views on the 'immigrants' in Western Sydney.

I care about the implication that those who support the Wanderers are all immigrants and thus un-Australian, as well as labelling this entire region as 'immigrants', despite knowing that all but those of Aboriginal heritage were immigrants at one stage.

I care about the implications of this statement as they are yet another in a long line of xenophobic comments to come out of the Melbourne AFL establishment that seek to denigrate Football and relegate it as a sport unfit for 'True Australians'.

GWS were unable to sweep this comments under the carpet because they had been noted on several previous occasions, and from that point, they can only be considered pre-meditated. Craig Foster has also written about a statement of Sheedy's, where he referred to supporters of Football as 'boat people'. These are not off-handstatements, but represent his true views on Football as a sport and the people in Western Sydney.

Standing by these comments shows a complete lack of empathy or awareness of the people of Western Sydney. It confirms the viewpoint that the AFL sees Western Sydney as heathens to be converted to the church of AFL, and to bring them into what the AFL sees as the "True Australian" sport.

What 'context' has his words been taken out of? His words were reflected honestly across the media. The only context provided is his own. His 'context' is exactly what he said, "We don't have the recruiting officer called the immigration department, recruiting fans for the West Sydney Wanderers."

Their refusal to accept that the statement was offensive, xenophobic and out of step with not only Western Sydney but modern Australia as a whole is another example of the AFL Bubble effect. If the AFL and GWS cannot step out of this bubble they will fail even harder than they are already.

I for one will never support GWS or the AFL, what little chance they had died with Sheedy's comments and his refusal to step up and apologise for them. I am certain I am not the only person to have this viewpoint.