AUSTRALIAN VIEW:The economic crisis has nothing to do with the Aussies' decision not to travel to Ireland this year, writes PAUL DAFFEY

SO THE AFL wants to postpone the International Rules series because of the global financial crisis. I don’t believe that for a minute. Tadgh Kennelly is more likely to become the next Pope (bless him) than the AFL is likely to face a funding shortfall in the next 12 months.

I believe the AFL has pulled out because it’s got bigger fish to fry at home.

In 1999 I covered the first International Rules series since the resumption of matches between Ireland and Australia. On the night of the first match, I remember watching in amazement as 64,000 fans filed into the Melbourne Cricket Ground. All the talk was about the pace and attractiveness of the hybrid game. A Melbourne columnist recently claimed that Australian football is to Melbourne what jazz is to New Orleans, a second language a lot of people speak.

After that 1999 game, a lot of people in Melbourne were speaking about International Rules. I was among them, but in hindsight I was more interested in the circumstances of the Irish players than I was in the actual game. Jarlath Fallon, the flying postman from Tuam, was an exotic figure compared to the professional players with more money than taste.

Last year only 45,000 turned up to the MCG for the match between Ireland and Australia. That’s not a bad attendance (the stadium holds 100,000), but it’s certainly a drop-off from 1999. I’m a sports journalist who writes mainly about Australian football. I took no notice of the game and I can’t remember hearing anything about it other than the fact there was none of the embarrassing violence that marred the series of 2005 and ’06.

I imagine if I’d turned up at a good honest footy pub like the Rose Hotel in Fitzroy, where they serve rissoles and mashed potato to give you more energy to yell at the game on the television, I might have heard something about the Irish horses who were preparing for the Melbourne Cup, or a conversation on whether Jamesons or Bushmills is the better Irish whiskey, but I’d have heard very little about the Irish footballers trying to knock over the Australians.

I imagine a similar scenario if the AFL had sent a squad to Ireland later this year.

The AFL is flush with funds because of lucrative television rights. Its plan is to use those funds to expand the game until it becomes the country’s dominant football code. The plan in the immediate future is to add teams from the Gold Coast and western Sydney to the 16 clubs that play in the AFL.

The Gold Coast and western Sydney are traditionally resistant to the charms of Australian football. AFL officials say they’re prepared to spend 25 years and many millions of dollars to make sure that western Sydney, especially, fields a settled and viable team in Australian football’s national competition.

Yesterday, on the same day that the AFL announced it was pulling out of this year’s series with Ireland, the AFL’s Gold Coast expansion team announced that it had persuaded a rugby league star to switch codes in a breathtaking coup.

Karmichael Hunt plays with the Brisbane Broncos, the strongest club in the strongest rugby league competition in the world. He’s played for Queensland and Australia. He’s been less of a dynamo in recent times but, at 22, he should have been able to return to his former prowess.

Gold Coast’s luring of Hunt away from the game he’s always played to a game that he tried for a few seasons as a teenager in Brisbane is a costly publicity stunt. Hunt is more likely to fail than succeed in his venture to switch codes at a mature age.

Tadgh Kennelly was able to become a star for the Sydney Swans after taking up Australian football as an 18-year-old, but his success is proving to be the exception. Fellow Irishmen such as Marty Clarke (Collingwood), Setanta Ó hÁilpín (Carlton) and Colm Begley (Brisbane and now St Kilda) are showing just how difficult it is to adapt to a game that their team-mates and rivals have been playing since infancy.

Teenagers like Michael Quinn (Essendon) and Pearce Hanley (Brisbane) most likely have five years ahead before they know whether their dream to become professional footballers is going to end in tears or glory.

Hunt’s signature for the Gold Coast AFL team is a blow to the credibility of rugby league. It comes at a time when the Australian Rugby Union is also striking blows against the credibility of rugby league.

The AFL wants to see off both codes, as well as soccer, before it begins a campaign to spread the Australian game to distant shores.

The Irish tour would have been a pleasant diversion but, just at the moment, the AFL is shying from diversions.

In my view, it’s concentrating on stoking the fires of football expansionism at home.

Journalist Paul Daffey is a former Irish Timescolumnist who is now based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian Rules football.