AFL and War: Let's Make a Comparison

One of the footballers said, after the draw last Saturday, "It was war today, and it's not too often you come back and fight a war a week later, but we're up for it."

Mmm, grassy.

Afghanistan

This is no new analogy. AFL is frequently referred to in terms of battles, heroes, casualties, carnage, etc.

The media loves to hype up just how much all Melbournians love the football. And by writing and exposing us to pieces on how football is our religion, or how the only thing that people will judge you by is your AFL team loyalties, these trends (if they ever existed) are strongly reinforced.

My tutor from last Semester suggested that sports are some sort of 'war substitute', which satiate some sort of inherent human desire for conflict, presumably analogous to the 'hate speech' in 1984.

But this becomes confusing if we consider that we have no need for a substitute - Australia is involved in wars already. Why don't people follow the conflict in Afghanistan with the same zeal and passion that they follow the battles, triumphs, and losses of their chosen football teams?

I guess it's because

a) Nobody knows who the sides are

b) Nobody knows anything

I feel so unable to comprehend any of it - sure, I might know that Hamid Karzai is the current Prime Minister, and that the Taliban are still preventing stable governance. But how can I possibly hope to really know anything? All I know are words and figures. They mean little. I read this fascinating interview with Australian journalist Michael Ware, who has spent many years in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan.

He describes the lives of people in Australia (and, I suppose, all people living in affluent nations) as "a bubble floating on the sea of humanity", and notes that once he left it, he is unable to step back inside it in the same way.

I sometimes wonder whether I want to be able to step out of the bubble, and die having known what people are, what they do, why they do it.

And I think that this is why it is so ridiculous to compare football with war. Most people making the comparison have never been on a battlefield. Everything I read about war and violent conflict seems to agree upon the random way in which life and death are handed out.

Nobody goes into a football field expecting they might die. Football is so securely entrenched within the bubble - in a bubble of advertising for sponsors, of team colours, umpires who can stop the 'battle' with a blow of a whistle, and an audience who can actually see and know exactly what goes on on the battlefield.

...and perhaps we would care about them when they did happen.