That old war horse, Keith Dunstan, is still at it. You can’t keep a good man down! Many of you probably don’t know who Dunstan is. I only know these two things about him.
1. He is a Melbourne journalist of some standing; but more importantly
2. He is a co-founder of the Anti-Football League.
He wrote an opinion piece in yesterday’s Age, in which he laments that our footy-dominated lives have become much, much worse since he helped found the Anti-Football League in 1967, the original AFL.
In his own words, he refuses to refer to the Australian Football League as the AFL because they pinched his name.
Since that time, the 12-team VFL has become a 17-team AFL (soon to be 18), and whereas once upon a time, all six games were played on a Saturday afternoon, these days, they seem to take up the whole week, and if that hasn’t happened yet, he surmises that the TV stations will soon mandate it.
He refers to the new AFL television deal of $1.25 billion as “real money”, which could be used for something useful like getting Tassie out of debt.
He laments the fact that the AFL season appears to infringe more and more on the cricket season, with pre-season comps, and even pre-pre-season comps.
Dunstan concludes his opinion piece by suggesting that it would be best for everyone if the footy season could be reduced to say, six weeks, certainly no more than eight, with equal media attention given to other sports such as royal tennis, squash and lawn bowls.
Keith, I have some sympathy for your views and my heart goes out to you: if you thought things were bad in 1967, well, in 2011, you really do have something to complain about!