By Dr Sonja Hood - GM The Huddle
This Good Friday, you can go and see local football and netball right across Australia, you can watch professional rugby league and rugby union, or even tune into some Premier League soccer.
But you can’t see any AFL.
Every year, we debate this issue – and every year, Aussie Rules Football fans are left wondering why?
Think about it – as an increasingly secular nation, in a code which prides itself on its approach to multicultural participants, we hold the holiday of one religion as sacrosanct – while simultaneously fixturing other games regardless of other religious holidays (e.g. Passover or Ramadan).
Remember former Melbourne chairman Joe Gutnik struggling with attending games on the Sabbath?
More recently we’ve read about Bachar Houli’s remarkable dedication to his religion and his profession during Ramadan. The game doesn’t make allowances for these men, despite their devout religious beliefs.
Even our own captain Andrew Swallow, a Christian, is against it.
"If I was to take the club line I would say yes, but personally I would prefer not to," Swallow said. "I just don't think football should be played on Good Friday. It should be left a day where there's no football at all."
As Andrew knows however, just because we aren’t officially playing for the four-points, it doesn’t mean those in the industry aren’t working. In fact, for most AFL clubs, Good Friday is only a ‘day off’ for those playing on Sunday. For a team playing on Saturday like North Melbourne, players will be training, coaches will be coaching and staff will be in their offices or supporting the team like they do any other day prior to a match.
Like in previous years, we will have more than 1,000 supporters at an open training session at Arden Street.
Good Friday Football is well and truly back on the agenda and finally it looks like the AFL has softened its approach.
I’m disturbed by the argument that Good Friday is ‘traditional’. There have been plenty of football ‘traditions’ that have been changed. When I was a kid, all games were Saturday afternoons. Sunday football happened – and the sky didn’t fall in. Friday night football happened – and the MCG was so unprepared for the demand, it had to throw open the gates. Thursday nights, Monday nights, Sunday nights, interstate, overseas – not all fixture changes are good, but many of them are. So why not Good Friday? We play on Easter Sunday and we play on ANZAC Day. When I was a kid, these were as sacred as Good Friday. Overseas, they play professional sport like NBA (basketball) on Christmas Day.
Think about the other changes to Good Friday. You can now buy alcohol after midday – something that traditionally you couldn’t do on either Good Friday or ANZAC Day. So you can buy a drink, watch rugby, or go to a local football match - you just can’t watch live AFL.
In Victoria, the undisputed main event of Good Friday is the Royal Children’s Hospital Appeal. The RCH is our local hospital. It’s Carlton’s local hospital too. A Good Friday game would allow us to celebrate this and give back to a cause that has the passionate support of both clubs. And why should this just be a Victorian opportunity? Clubs in other states – where, by the way, there is no RCH appeal – have long been arguing for Good Friday football.
A Good Friday game could be a whole community celebration. Families could attend together - it can be hard to take kids to Friday night footy because of the late timeslot, but a twilight game would fix this. Through The Huddle, we take thousands of new Australians to their first game of football every year – and we’d work with Carlton to make this a key feature of Good Friday.
I say, make Good Friday football happen and let the thousands of fans who come to watch North train on Friday send a message that there is a place for it. With all due respect; those who’d rather spend the day at church or reflecting with family and loved ones, no one is stopping you.
Against
By Chelsea Collins – Media Coordinator
Good Friday football is well and truly back on the AFL’s agenda and is looking more likely than ever to become a reality as soon as the 2015 season.
The AFL has always been opposed to playing on this Christian holiday but North has continued to push for change ever since club president Dr Allen Aylett and then CEO Greg Miller proposed the idea more than 20-years ago.
Despite the growing number of Australians hailing from non-Christian cultures/religions and thousands considering themselves atheists or not religious at all; more than half of our nation’s population still Christian according to the 2011 Australian census. Good Friday holds special significance for many people and for Christians, it is the day Jesus died on a cross to set people free from sin so they could have a personal relationship with him.
The reason this day is considered so significant to Christians is because what happened on the cross is what we base our lives on. Just as some people follow football like it’s a religion, Jesus is the core purpose of anyone who follows Christ and the essence of who they are.
I always wonder why non-believers still celebrate the sacrosanct holidays of Easter and Christmas. If we are becoming a secular nation as some say, then perhaps we should just ignore these events. But we don’t because our modern society is busier than even and most families welcome these occasions to rest and recuperate with family and friends whether or not they believe and reflect on the reason behind the season. Most families that don’t follow any religion still celebrate these occasions and welcome the chance to unwind and do very little, considering this is such a rarity in Western culture and Easter is one of only two times a year that we’re generally forced to take a day off and do pretty much nothing.
Australian Rules football, especially in Melbourne, is all-consuming. It dominates the Australian sport’s landscape and you can’t escape the game during the season whether you’re a football fan or not. Is there something wrong with having one Friday night without footy out of the 22 others available to us in-season (not including finals)?
Australian Rugby League and Rugby Union have matches on Good Friday, you could say the AFL is behind the times in this regard but I prefer to consider it a traditionalist and don’t see an issue in leaving this day footy-free the way it has been since the VFL’s inception in 1896.
Raising much-needed funds for the Royal Children’s Hospital Good Friday Appeal is a fantastic idea, but considering they raised $16,405,534.65 last year, they clearly don’t need a football match to help bring in the coin. And there’s no reason why the AFL can’t dedicate a Thursday night game on the eve of Good Friday to the Royal Children’s Hospital.
Good Friday is one of very few holidays left which encourages time with family, rest from work and very few external distractions. One ‘day off’ from football and our busy lives isn’t such a bad thing.
I believe the players themselves actually welcome this day away from football and I say keep it the way it has been for the past 118 years, why do we need to change it now?
North Melbourne will hold a Good Friday training session at Arden Street from 11.30am. Get involved in the Good Friday Football conversation by using the hashtag #GFF on Twitter and registering your vote below.
