300 words (2 minutes reading time) by Lancing Farrell
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We are just over halfway through the 2025 AFL season (the major league playing Australian rules football). The premiership contenders are starting to appear.
I figure it is a good time to recap on the AFL-themed posts that have been posted on this site.
First cab off the rank was Tim Whistler with a tongue in cheek look at what it would be like if football was run like local government (and visa versa). Sometimes humour exposes something we otherwise fail to see. The post featured a guest appearance and commentary from Captain Council, our very own council super hero.
Then came Colin Weatherby with a more serious post about changes in the way data has been used to transform AFL into a professional football league and what councils might learn from their local footy club. Many amateur football clubs use performance data more effectively than the council does.
Most recently, Tim Whistler posted again, this time half serious and half joking. He looked at how football understands what creates real customer value and suggests that councils could learn from the AFL. Tim expanded on an earlier post from Lancing Farrell to show that councils who are prepared to accept that any score is a maximum score are creating waste in their services. He went on to imagine how football would be played if the AFL adopted the council’s approach.
I suppose the main point in each of the posts is that councils could learn a lot if they were open minded and interested to look outside local government for inspiration. They could start with football and ask their local footy club for help.
Note: the podcast was generated using Notebooklm.
Local Government Utopia 