Australian Football Fan Outside Victoria Shocked To Learn Their Local League Is ‘Interstate’, Even To Them
Adelaide man Craig Halloran, 41, says he is “still processing” the news that the football he has watched every weekend since he was five years old has, for administrative purposes, been classified as ‘interstate’ the entire time.
The discovery came while Halloran was watching an AFL broadcast. “I heard that human bobblehead Jack Riewoldt say something about “interstate teams” and I froze,” Mr Halloran said. “It really hit me like a brick,” he added. “If games outside Victoria are ‘interstate,’ then what was I watching every Saturday as a kid? I always thought it was SANFL. Turns out SANFL was interstate too. I don’t even know what I’ve been watching. I don’t know who I am. When I leave Victoria to go to South Australia I’m going interstate but when I leave South Australia to go to Victoria am I going home? Even though I live in Adelaide? It’s all messed up.”
Halloran says the seriousness landed when a new employee at his workplace asked if he could show him AFL. “This man was an immigrant from Sudan and keen to imbibe some of the local culture you see,” Mr Halloran said. “When I told him there wouldn’t be an AFL game that weekend, he looked puzzled. Then he pointed to a photo of a Norwood v Glenelg game in the newspaper. My heart just shattered. ‘Thats not AFL,’ I said, completely defeated.”
Friends have tried to reassure Halloran that nothing has actually changed — that the football itself is unaffected by how the AFL chooses to file it. Halloran remains unconvinced.
“They can say that,” he said. “But once you know, you know. Every mark, every goal — I’m sitting there thinking, was that real football, or was that just interstate football? It feels like I’m the Tasmanian AFL team – asking permission to be admitted into the elite league of a sport I helped build. Being told I better build a stadium first and then we’ll talk about it.”
A league spokesperson, contacted for comment, said the terminology was “pure logic.” “Football was invented in Victoria. It belongs to Victoria. Every other state is just running their own version of it, using our name, on our terms. So yeah — from where we sit, that’s interstate. We didn’t invent the confusion, we just administrate it.”
Asked to clarify whether “the AFL” referred to the competition or the sport itself, the spokesperson paused for a long moment before repeating, “Yeah — that’s interstate,” and ending the call.
Halloran has since started referring to his own supporter group as the “Non-Victorian Adelaide Football Club Supporter Group.”
