What will the AFL come up with when the World Cup kicks off? Something to deflect attention back to themselves.. Expansion to 22 clubs? Plans to introduce the game to Brazil? A player sprains his finger?

Japan need a Roy Keane-like figure to rant and rave, insult the coach, and storm off home.

Just going by Trevor Thompson's history "One Fantastic Goal", the administrators of the NSW Association were extra reactionary and cautious, just wanted to protect their own sinecures as guardians of the game. I can't actually make a judgment as to whether they were actually racist or not. In SA...

Yes, at the '54 Carnival Victoria fielded a good balance of ethnics and Anglos. Every state except NSW had some ethnics. South Australia's squad had only two anglos out of 15 players.

Not sure what you are getting at here. Prior to the Association/Federation split, ethnics were prevented from playing at the top level of Sydney football. So were not selected for the state team. That's why the NSW state team of 54 was all anglo. This situation led to the split a few years...

You are looking at it perhaps from an NSW perspective. Wasn't like that everywhere. 1954, interstate carnival competition- almost the entire SA squad were ethnics: Italians, Hungarians, Balts, Germans etc The entire NSW squad were anglos- no ethnics at all. Seems to have been something rotten...