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View Full Version : AFL Players Are NOT Soldiers



bulldogtragic
11-06-2016, 11:01 PM
So I watched the North v Geelong game as both are two teams we might meet come September. All telecast I've heard about soldiers going down, soldiers coming in and soldiers falling out.

Elite athletes of all sorts are hard, driven, strong and dedicated people. They can do great things on and off the field. But a game of footy is not war. It's not life and death. These players are not soldiers. They are not facing hostile enemies who wish to literally kill them bullets, bombs, explosives or other immediate ways of being literally killed. They are sent all over the world by our government of the day for which they might not agree, for relatively little money and face death there and an uncertain future if/when they return. In some cases of death, they may get left in a Malaysian war cemetery for 50 years because the governments didn't want to pay for their repatriation. I don't see a correlation of this and young men getting paid well to play football in Australia.

I find the whole referencing of AFL players to soldiers and a game of footy or footy season to a war really distasteful. My grumpy old man thread got shut, but this really, really annoys me.

whythelongface
11-06-2016, 11:51 PM
This isn't exclusive to AFL. The whole war analogies in sport does my head in.

Murphy'sLore
12-06-2016, 08:40 AM
The other one that bugs me is when political commentators start talking about leaders being 'assassinated' when they mean voted out of leadership by their party, and politicians having 'blood on their hands.' There are countries where political leaders are literally assassinated. Thank god, Australia is not one of them.

F'scary
12-06-2016, 01:42 PM
I don't mind the metaphor. It is positive for those who give so much to defend our country.

jeemak
12-06-2016, 01:50 PM
The other one that bugs me is when political commentators start talking about leaders being 'assassinated' when they mean voted out of leadership by their party, and politicians having 'blood on their hands.' There are countries where political leaders are literally assassinated. Thank god, Australia is not one of them.

Or stating a declaration of war against a segment of society has been undertaken by political opponents.

I thought the war analogies had been toned down a little bit in recent times around ANZAC Day, thankfully, as it was getting a little out of hand for a while there.