The Ladder likes to point out that the 100,000 capacity MCG
could be more than filled with people from homeless backgrounds, of which about
a third would be young people. It’s a nice way of getting the message across.
The AFL game itself is also a departure from UK football.
Not just in the combination of Irish hurling and rugby rules, but in the crowd.
No segregation, lots of families, almost as many women as men. The atmosphere
is a community letting its hair down for the weekend – providing some
therapeutic release for the emotion we bury inside of us. It’s certainly close to Shankly’s vision of a
‘big society all around us’. However odd
the rules, it was a thrilling game. As
an ex rugby winner I could appreciate the high levels of fitness and breadth of
skills required to play. If the AFL represented how a Foyer should work with
young people, then the focus was on agility, looking out for each other, a
combination of defence and offense skills, and a lot of resilience.
The game was framed by team songs (at the outset , and just
the winner at the end), which sound like something out of a carry on film. A
musical curse you spend hours later trying to forget. The players of both teams
enter onto the pitch by running through a giant banner decorated for the match.
These simple rituals all add to the
spectacle. It’s a reminder of how simple psychological tools used in
games reach out to the ways we interact as humans.
I couldn’t say I left the arena as a fan – I was rooting for
the losing team, as I always did in my youth – but I left feeling in need of a
‘ladder’ of our own. It’s something
special when a sport builds inside its model that the bottom teams each year
have the first pick of the draft for new young players – in other words, the
game ensures a sense of equality that every team can get a chance to lead the
Ladder with the best players in years to come. That’s something our society so
clearly lacks. Of all the rules in the
AFL, it’s the one we should be thinking how to adopt now: to ‘lock in’ a
different vision of social mobility that protects the ladder of aspiration for all.
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