The AFL bye rounds are always a bit of a slog, and it's easy to be overly downbeat about the state of the game as a result. Perhaps more so, though, when they're being played alongside arguably the biggest event in world sport.
But it's a contrast which really does invite some looking at the bigger picture, and just how well AFL football is placed to deal with the challenges of a rapidly changing society. And it's time like these, I think, which provide genuine cause for concern.
Like plenty of people in this country, I'm a massive fan of Australian football, but also a massive fan of soccer, and someone for whom the World Cup is a huge deal. I've watched every one religiously since the Socceroos first qualified for the finals back in 1974.
And one thing which always strikes me is how naturally and easily a whole country can seem to unite behind our national team, even people whose interests normally wouldn't extend to sport.
They're not seen as interlopers, or bandwagon jumpers, they're one of us, the more the merrier being the message. No matter the racial or cultural background, no matter the gender.
I've felt it again these past couple of weeks. I remember feeling it keenly, too, when the Matildas made their way through to the semifinals of the 2023 Women's World Cup.
Women's sport so often does the business of inclusion better than the men's version, which to be honest probably says as much about gender differences as it does about administration.
But that in itself should be a potent reminder to the largely male keepers of the Australian football code that a game essentially played only in this country and by an overwhelmingly white, middle-class audience, needs to keep its arms as open as possible. And footy doesn't always do that well.
Amidst the usual catalogue of free agency speculation and "gone in five seconds" talking points for TV footy shows that comprise much of the AFL media content these days, last week provided a couple of genuinely interesting items pertaining to the bigger picture of the health of the game.
One was political pollster Kos Samaras, a shrewd observer of Australian social demographics, addressing the AFL chief executives' conference on the Gold Coast.
Samaras spoke about the tougher task Australian football now has to win the loyalty of new generations given one in three Australians was born overseas, and via technology has as easy access to a whole world of sport as the biggest football code in their own backyard.
It's an issue of which the AFL, to its credit, has become increasingly attuned, as the low participation rates and interest of migrant communities like the Indian and Chinese diasporas becomes more starkly apparent.
But the AFL's genuine attempts to bring those potential audiences into the fold via things like Andrew Dillon's trip to India in January, or the Western Bulldogs courting the possibility of a premiership match played in India remain the subject of scorn and cynicism by a football world which rarely can be bothered looking beyond next week.
And if demographics explain the opportunity, culture might also explain why the AFL still struggles to seize it.
Witness, for example, the continued social media abuse of AFL commentator and former AFLW star Kate McCarthy, who was moved to issue a strong public takedown of the army of trolls who persist in their cowardly attacks on one of the best analysts in the caper.
I've followed Kate on Twitter for years and taken note of a lot of it, and it's mostly from inadequate little men jealous of the fact she both played and understands the game better than they ever could.
If you need to see evidence of what I am talking about, just look👇
— Kate McCarthy (@kateemac9) June 24, 2026
I have said countless times, I don't expect not be criticised or disagreed with. I do however think it's reasonable to expect not to be criticised or told I have no place in the game because of my gender. https://t.co/z5SKgAyxlp
They're the same losers who queue up to troll the comments sections under any article about AFLW. And the same bigots who pile on any attempt by the game's headquarters to promote inclusion and diversity.
Every sport has them, of course. But AFL still appears to have a particularly entrenched hostility towards women discussing the game.
And it's always underscored by a failure of some types of fan to recognise that pushing away people who haven't traditionally been the game's target audience only hurts the sport's long-term future.
Someone really needs to let these morons know in the sort of mono-syllabic language they'd understand that times have changed. Twenty years ago, Australian football clearly ruled the roost culturally and in the public consciousness. It doesn't any more.
And yes, that includes some of the anachronistic attitudes still prevalent in the often toxic masculinity and casual racism that still far too often pervades AFL football, and not just in the stands, but as often in the commentary boxes.
Not overtly, mind you, but in every snigger about any non-traditional source of support, be that women and girls, the gay community, or from newer arrivals to our shores. I hear it, I see it, and if it turns me off, what on earth must it do to those people who'd like to give our game a go, but still feel that somehow, they're not welcome?
The AFL has spent decades convincing Australians it is the centre of our sporting universe. The World Cup is a timely reminder that it isn't. If Australian football wants to flourish for another century, it can't simply keep talking to the people who already love it. It has to become a game that more Australians feel belongs to them.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.