AFL on Anzac Day

For a coun­try where sport is such an import­ant and oft-cel­eb­rated part of its cul­tur­al frame­work, New Zea­l­and is strangely bereft of tra­di­tion­al sport­ing fix­tures, even more so when it comes to cel­eb­rat­ing days of nation­al sig­ni­fic­ance. Wait­angi Day has nev­er had any event attached to it, and Anzac Day has nev­er had any asso­ci­ated sport­ing tra­di­tions, des­pite being in the middle of the rugby uni­on and league seasons.

Even the much-vaunted tra­di­tion­al “Basin Reserve tra­di­tion­al Box­ing Day test” is now neither tra­di­tion­al nor at the Basin Reserve. It took place on only four occa­sions, but the fact that it is still referred to as a tra­di­tion shows that people real­ise there is a void out there.

The main sport­ing events that occur in the same place at the same time every year are Christchurch’s racing week, and the Wel­ling­ton Sev­ens. That emphas­ises the void even further.

This vacancy is now being filled by an unlikely source. The St Kilda Aus­trali­an Foot­ball League match in Wel­ling­ton is a slick affair, and is about so much more than just the match on Anzac Day.

Last year saw a not-unex­pec­ted drop-off in crowd num­bers from the inaug­ur­al event, and there were vari­ous reas­ons for that. The ‘dif­fi­cult second album’ syn­drome was always likely. Last year missed out on the nov­elty factor from year one, both in terms of loc­al fol­low­ing and those mak­ing the trip from Aus­tralia. It also coin­cided with school hol­i­days in both coun­tries, which pushed up trans-Tas­man air­fares as well as empty­ing out Wellington.

How­ever, when match day arrived, they man­aged to cre­ate an exper­i­ence subtly dif­fer­ent from nor­mal fare at West­pac Sta­di­um. A giant screen was erec­ted on the Fran Wilde Walk­way show­cas­ing the sport and its his­tory. That may seem like a small ges­ture, but it acted like a giant elec­tron­ic wel­come mat: yes, you are back at a famil­i­ar place, but this is different.

St Kilda’s effer­ves­cent mas­cot, who of course is called Tre­vor, had been busy all week and greeted spec­tat­ors as they arrived at the game. Fire-eat­ers were out­side the sta­di­um; inside, a brass band circled the con­course, there were prizes for spin­ning the wheel and there was plenty of mer­chand­ise on sale. Inter­est­ingly, the queues appeared to be full of New Zealanders.

This is what pleased St Kilda man­age­ment the most: a con­nec­tion devel­op­ing between the loc­als and the club that has inves­ted in the idea. A real bond will take time, but it has started.

A fea­ture of the event was the Anzac Day pageantry: the ‘Last Post’, the speeches, the flags, the double anthems and the silence. An eer­ie silence, observed with rev­er­ence by over 99 per­cent of those at the ground. Say what you like, the Aus­trali­ans do this very well.

St Kilda lost, as they had the pre­vi­ous year, but sup­port­ers of Wel­ling­ton-based sides are used to this. On the pos­it­ive side, this was a good match — unlike the dew-affected, mud­dling, spill-the-ball affair from the pre­vi­ous year. From a pure sport­ing per­spect­ive, those at the match would be more temp­ted to return than those at the 2013 mod­el. St Kilda will want to start win­ning here though; they will not want a ‘War­ri­ors at Eden Park’ scenario.

On the day fol­low­ing the match there was a fam­ily day at the Basin Reserve, where the play­ers mingled with fans and chil­dren, as well as con­duct­ing basic drills, and on the Sunday there was a game between the New Zea­l­and Hawks and a South Pacific side. That capped off a week of all-round pro­mo­tion of the club, but more import­antly, the game in New Zea­l­and. Heav­ily involved in this was AFL New Zea­l­and, who are act­ively pro­mot­ing the code here after dec­ades of rel­at­ive inactivity.

The sport does have a his­tory in this coun­try. The first recor­ded game of Vic­tori­an Rules, as it was known then, was in Nel­son in 1868. (Nel­son also hos­ted the first game of rugby uni­on; pion­eers all round.) A Māori rugby team did a world tour in the 1880s, fin­ish­ing up in Aus­tralia and play­ing St Kilda, of all teams, in a series of Vic­tor­ia Rules matches. In the 1890s, there were 44 clubs in New Zea­l­and. The sport kept its hold in this coun­try up until the First World War, after which it mys­ter­i­ously vanished.

In the last five years that has turned around, due to a con­cer­ted push from AFL New Zea­l­and, and with more than a little help from head office across the Tas­man. The focus is on get­ting chil­dren, par­tic­u­larly those aged 7–12, involved in the sport. Import­antly, the sport is played over sum­mer, not just because those shorts and sing­lets are not made for a New Zea­l­and winter, but so that it is not in dir­ect com­pet­i­tion with the oth­er oval ball codes.

Kiwikick was intro­duced into a huge num­ber of primary schools across New Zea­l­and, with strong involve­ment from the Hawthorn Hawks. All that the young kids (30,000 and count­ing) had to do was sign up and learn the basics for an hour or so after school on a week­day, and they came away with a brown and yel­low cap, a brown and yel­low bag, and a brown and yel­low football.

As a res­ult of that ini­ti­at­ive, Shem Tatupu and Kurt Heath­er­ley are now on the roster at Hawthorn. Heath­er­ley was recently heav­ily involved in the pre-sea­son NAB Cup, play­ing every match for Hawthorn with dis­tinc­tion, and was on the fringes of being selec­ted in the Week 1 team for Hawthorn — no easy feat giv­en the depth of tal­ent in that side.

Nat­ur­ally, the primary club involved in tal­ent-spot­ting is now St Kilda, although the vast major­ity of clubs were involved in the latest com­bine, or tri­als in New Zea­l­and speak, to be held here. From that, Gio­vanni Moun­tain-Sil­bery, own­er of the coolest name in New Zea­l­and sport, got signed onto the roster at St Kilda.

Moun­tain-Sil­bery had no back­ground in the sport what­so­ever. He was a tal­en­ted school­boy from South Auck­land with a back­ground in ath­let­ics and rugby uni­on. How­ever, he excelled at all the rel­ev­ant drills, and is get­ting coached in the sport while fin­ish­ing his school­ing and tak­ing up his con­tract with St Kilda. He joined Joe Baker-Thomas from Pori­rua, who has a rugby and high-jump­ing background.

St Kilda’s latest sign­ing is Christ­ch­urch teen­ager Barclay Miller, who has a bas­ket­ball back­ground. The 16-year-old was in the Can­ter­bury Rams squad last year, so he is clearly an impress­ive ath­lete. The ties between St Kilda and New Zea­l­and are strength­en­ing, and the tal­ent pool is being tapped. It is a lot easi­er teach­ing a 16-year-old how to play a new sport than it is con­vert­ing a 29-year-old rugby league play­er into a rugby uni­on num­ber 10.

AFL New Zea­l­and is also sup­por­ted by the Aus­trali­an High Com­mis­sion, which has a par­tic­u­lar focus on the devel­op­ment and sup­port of indi­gen­ous sport in both coun­tries. In addi­tion to the Kiwikick kids, there are around 10,000 chil­dren at sec­ond­ary school level involved.

Chief exec­ut­ive Rob Van­stam notes that there are now 80 people in AFL New Zea­l­and. Two of those are Aus­trali­an, but the rest are New Zeal­anders. The double bene­fits of the organ­isa­tion here are that it gen­er­ates a pool of loc­al coaches, and it helps those chil­dren being coached feel that they are not part of some inter­na­tion­al social experiment.

With this fledgling involve­ment of New Zeal­anders into the pro­fes­sion­al ranks, the cas­u­al fol­low­er will find it easi­er to identi­fy with clubs. The highest-pro­file play­er in that cat­egory cur­rently is Auck­land-born Shane Sav­age (although he did grow up in Melbourne).

So what is in store for the future of this fix­ture? As with oth­er sports, a shift to a day­time kick-off would have a huge pos­it­ive effect on crowd num­bers. Giv­en that AFL New Zealand’s primary push is at pre-teen chil­dren, a 7.45pm kick-off for a match that lasts three hours is not ideal.

That change to an earli­er start is exactly what is hap­pen­ing this year. Anzac Day 2015, the cen­ten­ary of the Gal­lipoli land­ing, sees a 1.10pm kick-off. As well as cre­at­ing a far bet­ter time of the day for Wel­ling­ton fans, it also provides a nice lead-in for view­ers being the Tas­man as it cur­tain-raises the tra­di­tion­al Colling­wood and Essen­don Anzac Day fix­ture at the Mel­bourne Crick­et Ground.

The real bonus of this schedul­ing is that it makes the event so much more access­ible for chil­dren. This ties in much more favour­ably with that AFL New Zea­l­and strategy of focus­ing devel­op­ment effort on those aged 7–12. Noth­ing drags a par­ent along to an event quite like an enthu­si­ast­ic child.

For the first time, St Kilda’s oppon­ent is anoth­er Mel­bourne club. Carlton, 16-time premi­er­ship win­ners and a found­a­tion mem­ber of the AFL, will bring their huge fol­low­ing with them.

Both sides will hold open train­ing ses­sions at West­pac Sta­di­um on the 24 April. That is a school day, and organ­isers are work­ing closely with primary schools to encour­age as many chil­dren as pos­sible to attend. It is hoped that the num­ber of people turn­ing up to these ses­sions will be in the thousands.

Also on that day, the Nation­al League Academy Tour­na­ment — involving three teams — is tak­ing place at Hutt Park, and there is a dis­play of AFL skills at the TSB Arena the pre­vi­ous even­ing. A youth team from South East Vic­tor­ia is also mak­ing the trip over the Tas­man to play a New Zea­l­and under-16 side, and the Basin Reserve will once again play host to an open day on the day after the match. A thou­sand people atten­ded that event last year, and that num­ber is expec­ted to grow.

As you can see, the AFL are think­ing 20 years ahead here. As they did with their expan­sion into Sydney and Bris­bane — a ven­ture most thought would nev­er suc­ceed — they are con­cen­trat­ing on estab­lish­ing the game at grass­roots level while hav­ing reg­u­lar elite guest matches. It is of note that even Adelaide and Perth, des­pite being AFL heart­land cit­ies, got per­man­ent fran­chises only in the 1990s.

It is a mod­el the AFL are famil­i­ar with, and the deep pock­ets in Mel­bourne will know how to invest, and can take a short-term hit if required. Should the dream of an AFL team based in New Zea­l­and become real­ity, it will be a care­fully planned intro­duc­tion. And as things stand at the moment, there is only one ground in the coun­try that could host such a venture.