Here's why Football is the most popular sport in the world.
Take a few people (any number more than 1), 2 jumpers and a ball and you've got yourself a football match. Don't have a ball? Doesn't really matter, use an empty coke can or something. Don't have jumpers then use 2 people who are rubbish!
It can be played by anyone, anywhere. Try playing cricket with a coke can (actually that might be funny to watch).
Also I think its pretty hard to match the atmosphere at a big footie match or down the pub when there is one on tv. The rules are pretty easy to understand, its pretty obvious at all times who is winning and the game doesn't go on for too long. Try explaining the rules of cricket to your missus, even umpires get it wrong!
Still prefer cricket mind.
That's the other reason, it is definitely the easiest to pick up.
I'm not one of the guys in here who's going to start bagging the crap out of soccer. I've been to an A-League game and I sometimes watch the Premier League on TV, and I don't necessarily find it boring. Cricket isn't exciting, that's the truth, I love going to the cricket because it's a day out. You don't need to concentrate all day, and you can chant at the opposition all day. I like AFL because it's exciting and entertaining.
I see AFL as a sort of logical evolution on soccer. Take soccer, but you can pick up the ball now and drop kick it, let players tackle each other to the ground, make goals more common and therefore, make it more exciting. Soccer's simplicity is great, and I don't hate it, but I prefer AFL.
People talk about atmosphere, but from my experience, so called atmosphere is people chanting all game, mexican waves and the like. I also find that this is most common in game which is not particularly exciting. You can't be watching a game intently if you're busy chanting or waving. You may still be enjoying it, but in the same way that you enjoy cricket.
And as for dominance, there's a big difference between international dominance, and domestic dominance. Australia is the best because it produces the best sportsmen. Manchester United is the best because a rich guy owns it. There's no natural evolution of teams getting better, it just comes down to which rich guy buys out a club.
In AFL, there is a salary cap, so that all teams are on level ground with paying players, there is a drafting system, so that the best young talent goes to the worst teams, and what you see is shorter periods of dominance, what you see is teams up for a few years then down for a few years. What you see is 6 different premiers in the last 8 years. And you see the team that won the premiership 2 years ago near the bottom of the ladder, needing to rebuild because its head got too big and its best player walked out because of the poor culture. In soccer, players walk out because of their pay cheque, even if they're making enough money per match to feed every homeless person in England for a week.
But forget about the evenness of the competition for a minute if you want, and talk about the popularity in a real situation. A country that watches both. England don't watch AFL, they might have a highlights package on cable TV at 3am, but they don't get to go to live AFL matches, and they don't see enough to appreciate the game. Australians have the option of going to Rugby Union, Rugby League, Cricket, Soccer and AFL matches, but AFL is still the most popular. It is now 150 years old, and started off as a game to keep cricketers fit in winter. Australians have had the option to start liking soccer, but haven't. As someone put it, we used to be your 'bitches,' and yet the sport never spread, because Australians obviously don't appreciate it as well, but either way, AFL has won because it's more exciting. That is the argument of every AFL fan, that it's more exciting, so that seems to be the reason it's more popular.
In soccer, a blowout is 3-0. In AFL, it's something like 150-60. Goals occur more often, teams today play on at all costs to advance ground. There's no standing around, trying to build up (not a generalisation, but something that I've seen even in a Liverpool v Man United game), and if a team does kick a flukey goal, it doesn't change the match. There's time to reverse the trend, time to get in front, and often you see an avalanche of goals from a team fighting its way back into the game. These are all things that you won't see in soccer.
. -10 Top Red points
