Simon Says, "AFL International"

I finally got round to doing it. Watching a training session of the Israeli–Palestinian team for the upcoming AFL international competition. One of the coaches Simon Jacobs guided me by cell phone to the soccer pitch where they train. The strange thing was the tinge of English accent that he has. When I got there I asked him if he had an English wife. “No,” he said. He actually happens to be English.
Stone the crows, a pom teaching Palestinians and Israelis Aussie rules football! That really does make for a cosmopolitan donnybrook. But Simon wasn’t fazed by my stunned mullet mug. The point is that he’s into coaching and coaching any sport is what he likes doing, especially Australian Rules football.
I asked Simon how he got involved with Aussie rules?
“The First time was in Oz,” he says “a cousin took me to a Blues game... that was it... I was hooked. An amazing sport, both to play and to watch. If it wasn’t for the size of the pitch it would be played all over the world. It has to be sliced up a bit to fit a soccer pitch, that’ll bring in more countries and then maybe one day the love of the sport will have those countries building full size competitive pitches to be able to compete in the future.” Simon spent half a year in Australia, with his wife, travelling around every single state in a car, with a tent in the boot.
If he lacks the on hands experience of growing up with the game it doesn’t matter too much to Simon. He says looked up some books for the rules and concepts saw some videos and after that he says, “coaching is pretty much the same for all sports.” In fact he claims Aussie rules is one of the easiest games to coach because the skills required are relatively simple, that is if you’re talking about getting a game going and not necessarily a VFL grand final. He also feels that this down to earth uncomplicatedness of the game makes it a great game for exporting to other countries. It’s basically about teamwork and moving the ball forward with lots of handballing. To get a game going you don’t need to teach the players all the options there are in kicking the ball or bouncing. Some dropkicking or punting, marking the ball and tackling by the rules is enough to get a team of novices off and running. But not to worry its not as if the Peres Centre boys will be up against the likes of Jesaulenko in Australia later this year, because there will be two parallel international competitions, one for developing football countries and one for teams from countries that already have AFL leagues.
Just so you can keep tabs on things The International competition begins in Melbourne on 27th August and the Finals will be held on 5/6 September.
How good is the competition going to be?
From what Simon’s heard, the nations in our division are quite mixed, although all are still developing nations of the sport, a few should be quite strong physically and also in terms of technique.
So how does Simon rate our chances?
Simon’s response, “I actually think we’ll be more competitive than people expect. There are a few teams, even in our division, that can, on paper, take us to the cleaners, but we’re not coming along just for the ride, we’ll be putting up a fight against all the opposition we come up against.”
How often does the team train?
“We train once - twice a week, not forgetting the lads all have regular jobs, and lots have families to raise at home too, add to that requesting permits for the Palestinians for every session, transport etc... It all gets very hard logistically, not the optimum way to be training, but we live and move on with what we have. We have had a 3 day training camp, and we’ll have another coming up at the end of this month.”
About ten guys showed up that night for training, though usually there are 20 to 30. Watching the guys go through their paces it’s obvious that most of the guys are still unfamiliar with the basics of the game that anyone growing up with it would have. About the players, only a third of the Israelis have Anglo backgrounds a few of the rest have learnt about the game through their Anglo friends and the rest hadn’t seen the game till the beginning of this project. As for the Palestinians, of the 13 on the squad a handful of them are some of the teams top players. Simon would have preferred me watching a more typical training session. He feels it would have been more impressive. Originally the squad started out with about 100 players that scouts had mustered up, from the Palestinian and Israeli sides. After a little while the coaches thinned out the crowd. But the team’s morale is high because the squad met a team of Aussie ex pats in a game the other week and the Peres Centre crew won. So tonight they were both tired and happy, with their confidence somewhat boosted. You may well ask why more of those ex pats aren’t playing in the Peres Centre team? The reason is due to the rules of the AFL international competition. There are limitations pertaining to where and when one learned the sport, and besides that most of the Aussie guys playing in the friendly weren't Israeli but rather out here on one year progams.
And for those of you interested, the next game will hopefully take place at the T.A. Sportek on 27th July. All are welcome to come cheer the guys on and give the lads a big boost before the tournament.
But remembering the physical nature of the game and the central role of ruckmen I was curious if there were tall timbers in the squad to fill those roles. Simon says he has enough players of various sizes, but he insists that the key to the modern game is a strategy of possession footy, so physical bulk and power is less important than it used to be, though you do need a good sized ruckman to get the ball in the first place! Which the team has. Ah if only I’d turned up on a more typical evening.
I was interested to see the interaction between the players. An important contribution from the AFL was former Geelong player and AFL international talent manager Kevin Sheehan’s visit to Israel some months ago. Danny Brill, the team’s other coach who was on milluim this time, says that Kevin's visit was a great help, at several levels, including management, teaching basic skills, but mostly team enhancing things, to get the players focused on the team effort and away from their differences. Before training really kicked in, I sensed some reservation between the members of the different groups, but that melts away once the coaches start putting the players through their paces. They all gather around the coach who explains what he wants out of the guys in Hebrew and a bit of English, and then one of the Palestinian players translates for those who didn’t understand. Simon’s take on the issue is, “On the field you have team-mates and opponents, not races or religions. Your team-mates are like your brothers in any successful team, and your opponents are your colleagues who you respect and shake hands with after the game… just as a way to let two guys from two different nations see each other for who they are individually, and become team-mates.” Danny put it this way, “Its about sport and putting faces on to the image of the “others”.” And as Simon says if I’d come on a more typical day I’d probably have seen a lot more interaction even before the session started.
And if I was under the impression that training would be held in English to help prepare the team for Australian conditions, like communication with the umpires and the social side of the international competition between games, Simon put me straight once again. “I wouldn’t worry about the language problems on the pitch, not everyone in this world speaks English, that’s why there are signals for every whistle.”
Naturally getting these training sessions going isn’t as easy as just popping over to your local school footy oval as it was in our childhoods. The soccer pitch they use for training is grass, but it’s far from Aussie standards; patchy, dry here and spongy there, hardy conducive to bouncing a ball. And there are no Aussie rules goal posts which were supposed to have arrived in April. But the Peres Centre for Peace have provided full training gear, mouthguards, singlets, transport, sandwiches, drinking water, first aid etc. (Though I wonder who's left with the dirty laundry after each training session?) The AFL for their part has donated balls and cones too.
Does Simon think the AFL is serious about getting a league going here?
He does, although he’s sure they don’t think it’ll happen over-night. “I think they’re more interested in getting a sort of Aus-kick program started up first, and let things take their own place and pace after that.”
So keep an eye open any entrepreneurs out there. This might be the time to start sussing out an AFL franchise business.