AFL: As relevant as Kabaddi?

"You can be the best AFL player in the world," said Mark Viduka at the Alex Tobin Medal awards night on Monday. "But you'll never get to play in a World Cup in Germany like I did."

Dukes, a massive Collingwood fan himself, summarised in a single statement why no football fan should ever possess anything by unbridled pride in their sport of choice.

Read the comments at the bottom of a Herald Sun story yesterday and you will witness AFL fans spouting the same anti-football slant we've all heard endless times prior.  Lest we never forget this simplyunforgivable image from the same paper too.

Game for fairies, a sporting of diving, boring, low-scoring etc. Alongside some plain racist comments about football's multicultural roots. None of that bothered me actually. Heard it all before, please return when you have the intelligence to form an original argument.

What vexed me was the tone of superiority from AFL fans who attempted to dismiss and belittle football as a minor speck on Australia's sporting landscape. Well, I'm sorry AFL fans, while you snigger at your pre-eminence within the 21 million people of Australia, the other six billion people in the world are bent over double chortling at your simply ridiculous backyard hobby (if they ever get to hear about it that is).

Far too many football people, from media to players, coaches and administrators (fat chance with a former AFL player at the helm), are scared to take the fight to AFL, perhaps because they feel it is a battle they will never win or possibly they don't want to alienate fans who have an AFL and proper football overlap. I possess no such trepidation.

I have no doubt that many of FourFourTwo reader's fall into this AFL/football overlap category, but I make no apologies for this blog or the alienating effect it might have on you.

Now, how many of you are aware of the sport of Kabaddi? Here is a video of the most recent Kabaddi World Cup which I implore you watch, only briefly at least, so I can illustrate my point.

Looks pretty stupid, eh? Men in their pants on a dirt patch trying to grapple each other like children who have had too much Coca-Cola and cheese-based maize snacks.

Well, I'd venture that Kabaddi, alien to us, would evoke a similar reaction to an Indian watching AFL for the first time. "Why are those vest-bearing gorillas running around a cricket pitch trying to catch a rugby ball?". "That guy somehow just missed kicking the ball through that massive elongated target, but what's that? He still gets a point for hitting it wide?"

If you were to meet this Kabaddi fanatic and he attempted to lord over you with his version of a superior sport, that would result in him being nothing less than a figure of widespread ridicule for you and your peer. I feel no different about AFL fans.

In fact, considering there are 28 nations which form part of International Kabaddi Federation, including Australia, it might be fair to say the thigh-slapping chaos of the sport far outstrips AFL.

I find AFL's arrogance embarrassing in the current global landscape, but strongly believe that a humbling is likely. Eventually...

The world has become increasingly interconnected in recent decades through the advent of cheaper and faster modes of transport, plus, and predominantly, the internet and social networking.

In the 15th century, English poet John Donne famously claimed that "No man is an island, every man is a piece of the continent."

While Australia will always remain an island in the straight geographical definition, its connection with the world, and more directly Asia, is growing increasingly tighter through the aforementioned advents.

Will it be AFL or football, a sport played in every corner of the globe, that will strengthen through this coming together? Considering the global army that football has on the march, it would be like a sporting version of the Battle of Thermopylae - an event bought back into the public conscience most recently through the 300 film - where (and attempting not to ruin the film too much for you here) the minority might be able to fight valiantly at first, but the mass Persian Army was always going to succeed.  

This point was made by regular FourFourTwo contributor and social economist Simon Kuper in his brilliant Soccernomics book, where he describes football spreading to every corner of the globe and specifically predicts the downfall of AFL in Australia, resulting in the game being played at little more than "cultural festivals" in a 100 years time.

And AFL fans still think they're more important than us football fans? Please. AFL is a storm in a very small teacup with the sort of undeserving arrogance which usually only emanates from Kyle Sandilands. AFL is an incestual pseudo-supremacy - something which history has eradicated at every opportunity.

Don't fear AFL. Don't let their fans fool you that they are part of a vaster or more impressive movement. Ridicule their delusion at every opportunity and sleep easy that in being a football fan you are part of the greatest, most prominent and most important sporting family in the world.