Bam! Bam!

I've got them in my sights. Both barrels.
First the print media:
The Sunday Mail had bugger all on the SANFL trials(at least my edition) yet when a local AFL player so much as picks his nose it makes the front and/or back page with full story inside. And just for the record folks there were 25 pages of sport.
Then there was The Advertiser: Did anyone see that pitiful 5 paragraph article on page 77 on Monday? The latter used to provide an excellent two page spread every Friday(preview) and Monday(review) but last year they were both reduced by half. Believe me I know because I have been keeping scrapbooks for years(don't ask me how many please).
As for trial game scores. Forget it and the only teams published at all were South Adelaide and Central District on Saturday.
I went to Kilburn to see my beloved Blues against North and finished up at Noarlunga that night(admittedly I live down that way) but I very nearly did not attend the latter because The Advertiser printed a 2.10 pm starting time instead of 6.30 pm.
Thank goodness for this forum because without it we would almost be deprived of print coverage of grass roots football which is where all AFL players start their careers.
Second the SANFL:
It's great that Darren Chandler contributes on this forum but I am still disappointed on a couple of fronts:
The SANFL must be struggling for a quid when they struggle to fork out an extra 70K for ABC coverage of their product and cannot bail out the mini league themselves which probably explains why the SA Football Budget has shrunk to half its previous size yet still costs $3.00. It was good value now it is a rip off. They offered some lame duck excuse that it is now convenient to slip it in your hip pocket. Get real! The WAFL budget was still A4 size as recently as 2010 the first year of the SANFL's microism(shades of the new yellow pages).
I keep the grand final edition of the budget as it is(was) an outstanding publication( a year book if you like) and would make a special trip into the CBD to get one if I was not attending the GF the next day. Imagine my disappointment last year when the grand final edition was no bigger dimension wise. Even if production costs are prohibitive surely an exception can be made for that one day in October.
Also,as long as I have followed the game,the SANFL has always changed its marketing strategy from one season to the next. Again,imagine my disappointment last year when we had to endure that pathetic"Your Tribe Is Calling" for the second year in a row but shock,horror I heard it again the other day courtesy of Tim Ginever promoting 2012.
Come on guys! Don't sit on your hands like the SACA. Then again,perhaps the explanation is in one word: 'Economics".

To add to this, we are aware that, unless a buyer can be found very soon for Sportsbeat, that publication will also fold - meaning that the weekly SANFL previews by C.K, as well as his other weekly SANFL column, will disappear from weekly SANFL media. It will also be the end of the excellent SAAFL previews of the first seven divisions each week.

If a prospective buyer is interested, they should contact Indaily.

Terrific post, rover.

The problem is that the papers cater for what the perceive as their target market, so it's up to the SANFL community to put pressure on the Advertiser. Talking to their journalists, it's clear that the have to fight for space for SANFL news.

Another good reason to support Indaily!

Thought the same rover .... Great post!!

The promotion of the sanfl this year has been very poor by the media.

With 2 weeks to the start if the season .... It ain't good

I personally refuse to buy any Adelaide papers.

Fantastic post rover

Localfootysa on adelaidenow is a great site for all your up to date sanfl info. I actually think the hype around the upcoming afl season has diminished big time this preseason.

More stories about Adelaide oval 2014, optus , player payments than anything IMHO. I Couldn't even tell you who power/crows play round 1.

What do others think ???

I agree with you millsy.

Definitely a very different vibe for the start of the afl/sanfl season.

Don't know what I could point it too ?? Fringe, festival, clipsal , swimming championships ??

Who knows. Just seems very low key this year and like you I have no idea who crows and port are playing .... Even my team hawthorn I have no idea !!! Not that I follow them closely like south.

Even talking to people at work/family .... Not many people really care for it ATM.

Maybe the hype and cost of the afl are turning people away???

Our papers smack of sa parochialism trying to elicit the them and us victorian bashing mentality like those beer ads.

It is cringeworthy.

What just reporting on sport and let the sport do the talking?
Rather than try to manufacture interest and tribalism, I would think most sport readers would simply like to know what is going on.

If they did that, they may even sell more papers.

Spot on chambo.....the bias with the local sides in the paper is just embarrassing!!!

No wonder we are seen as a joke in the eastern states.

Got a free advertiser today and just flicked to the back page to see the Bernie Vince saga continue .... Pathetic !!!

is the coverage being reduced coz the interested has dropped or is it vice versa??......double edged sword really.....

People are simply not that into afl as they use to be IMHO. It's not the 90s anymore. 18 -25 y.o kids would prefer to be on facebook or at a nightclub than
attending a football game. Look at any 18 - 25 year old publicly wearing afl colours. Do you think they are considered trendy or tragic.

Yep ... Young kids now would rather spend money on seeing a band/gig than going to a afl game . That's the impression just talking to a few guys (younger guys) I know.

I remember we use to always meet up at the lakes for a meal/beers before a game. Now I just watch it on the tv.

Millsy wrote:People are simply not that into afl as they use to be IMHO. It's not the 90s anymore. 18 -25 y.o kids would prefer to be on facebook or at a nightclub than
attending a football game. Look at any 18 - 25 year old publicly wearing afl colours. Do you think they are considered trendy or tragic.

I reckon this is on the money of the issue.
The Crows when they were the only team, people couldn't get enough of the feel good drivel wanting to be associated with it all.

To a lesser extent, but similarly with the Power.

So in reality the honeymoon is well and truly over. Just nobody has told the papers that SA sport reading public has maybe grown up a bit in the last 20 years.

Just digressing for a moment, why has nobody told West End that?
Surely they do their market research. I am a west end drinker but their ads have to be the worst around. If they listened a bit, they would know that the beer drinking public is not as loyal to one product anymore.

You look at the Carlton United ads. They are bloody clever.

Seriously think South Australia has this inferior complex (well the media does) about Victoria than Victoria has about us!!!

Time to move on......

Sanfl coverage in media is pretty poor except for rph, life fm, adelaide now footy page and the abc coverage , in this day and age the internet is the way to go for sanfl coverage with sites like this talking footy, sanfl clubs facebook pages and websites and other footy forums eg footy sa.

Did anyone see the sanfl liftout in the advertiser yesterday ???

Millsy wrote:Did anyone see the sanfl liftout in the advertiser yesterday ???

I didn't. I stopped reading SA newspapers for sporting information years ago.

As someone who dips his toe into the SA sporting media I have had similar thoughts Rover re SANFL coverage, although I think Local Footy SA is an excellent web site.

Hence the launch of the FOOT-e TIMES SA which I hope will cover some of the holes in coverage,


Also the liftout in the Tiser yesterday was excellent, I liked how it was attached to the AFL one.

this offset a little by Sunday Mail's headline today that the Eagles went winless in the Pre-Season
even though they beat Glenelg, just, on March 3 at Thebarton

or don't wins against Glenelg count anymore.

Southee wrote:Seriously think South Australia has this inferior complex (well the media does) about Victoria than Victoria has about us!!!

Time to move on......

John Nicholls was once asked if the Victorians hated SA like we hate them. He laughed and said it wasn't possible. As a lad I grew up with all the KG Cunningham type nonsense being drummed into me about big bad Victoria, but as I matured I realised they were like Americans and their attitude towards Australia. It wasn't as if they disliked, or looked down upon South Australians, they simply didn't know much about us. While the Collingwood, Carlton, Richmond, Essendon supporters could hate each other, they didn't have time to hate us. That is still the case.

When I started visiting the Hawthorn Football Club back in the mid 1980s, a discussion about SA footy was met with silence, not because they didn't want to talk about it, but because they knew nothing about it. Not their fault, their media at the time simply concentrated on VFL, so how could the footy public learn anything about us if they were never told? The only non-VFL player they knew at the time was Garry McIntosh.

Back on topic, I think state footy used to be of interest to the SA footy public, especially when we played the Big V. Beating the Vics seemed to be the ultimate achievement in football. When SA entered the evil world of AFL football, they played Hawthorn in their first game. To the Hawks, it was round 1 of a new season. To the Crows, it was like a state match, SA v Vic, the crowd was feral with "Kick a Vic" signs all over the place. It had never been conveyed to the SA footy public that it wasn't a state match, it was a club match, and they would be coming up against Victorian foes nearly every week.

As the season progressed, I watched the intensity dwindle, not only in the crowd, but amongst the Crows players as well. "Kick a Vic" had lost its lustre. When the Crows won the 1997 & 1998 premierships, the state was abuzz with excitement, just as they had been when our soccer team was winning, when we won the Sheffield Shield, or when the Adelaide 36ers were winning titles. But, as in those other sports, it has been difficult to retain the enthusiasm since the success well has dried up. The SA public loves to win, but are not so loyal in defeat.

The old KG Cunningham attitude that "We broadcast to a South Australian audience, so therefore all they want to hear about is Crows & Power" is an anachronism. It has been for some time. People all over the world can stream 5AA on the internet and are infuriated by our infantile calls of the game. The concept of having a media award that can only be won by a Crows or Power player is a ridiculous one, and well past its use-by date. Time for the Adelaide media to take the quantum leap into the 21st century and treat the AFL for exactly what it is .. a national club competition.

Well said AH.

Yes, I agree,well said, AH.

Regarding biased calls, SA is cringeworthy but it's widespread. You can listen to overseas callers in any sport and whether they're good or bad, at least they come over as unbiased generaly.

Our AFL coverage is totally different and club or state loyalties are often rampantly obvious, with some honorable exceptions.

Generally overseas most sports have a one town one team structure (occassional derby) so it can be perocial depending

In American Sport most pro teams have a broadcasting network that travel with the team.

As an example I am a Milwaukee Brewers baseball fan fan, I can listed to Bob Uecker (of Major League fame) call all 162 games plus playoffs on WTMJ and the Brewers Radio Network... where the team goes they go.

Top post AH!!!