Letter From Australia:One of the paradoxes of Australian football is the anguish over the direction of the game despite attendances that suggest its health has never been so rude.

The anguish comes from traditionalists, invariably former footballers or supporters who've been steeped in the game since they were in nappies, about the commercial aspects that take the game further and further from its roots.

In the mid-1990s, the Australian Football League became fully professional and players no longer were required to spend time at workaday jobs, earning a living among the great unwashed.

Such jobs, among people who were struggling to put food on their families' tables, had until then had the effect of keeping the players' feet on the ground.

Within a few years of being out of the regular workforce, AFL players no longer had much in common with Australian workers other than a shared love of the game from which they made their living. Bloated salaries lent the opportunity to live like pop stars, spending big on cars and clothes, haircuts and silly tattoos.

Time away from training was spent not in work, but honing PlayStation skills and punting on horses. "The idle rich" became a term of contempt for footballers whose feats on the field, which often were quite limited, seemed out of all proportion to their incomes and lifestyles.

While the disparities between AFL players and Australian football's heartland became more pronounced, the improvement in facilities at AFL venues meant more fans were attracted through the gates.

Comfortable seats, a ban on full-strength alcohol, and women's toilets that were an advance on wartime latrines, meant the AFL began to appeal beyond the heartland, beyond those who had always had the game in their hearts to those who were interested in the fuss.

The code term for the new spectators was "theatregoers". They had no history with the game. They were attracted to the AFL as a good afternoon or evening out.

The AFL encouraged this new species of supporter by claiming it was an entertainment organisation as much as a sporting body. Diehard fans choked on their meat pies.

The success of the AFL's campaign to broaden the game's appeal has been marked by the increase of spectators through the gates; just last week, another record figure was announced for attendances to the halfway mark of the season.

At the same time, however, it was acknowledged that more spectators were going to local football in an attempt to reconnect with the soul of the game.

Yesterday, at the risk of making it sound like a chore, I undertook an exercise in which I watched two Australian football matches at opposite ends of the scale.

At 2pm Melbourne time, I was at a suburban oval to watch a match that might be likened to a GAA contest between adjacent parishes (but less glamorous).

At 5pm, I was at Melbourne's newest you-beaut football stadium, completed in 2000, to watch an AFL match between two teams that were more or less parish rivals only a few short years ago but have since been swept up by the AFL money racket.

The early match was in a Melbourne suburb called North Heidelberg (Germans were prominent in Australian naming-rights battles), a suburb that bears comparison with northside neighbourhoods in Dublin and Cork.

North Heidelberg, in Irish terms, is a tenement suburb. Housing is uniformly low-grade and government funded.

The most rundown region in the suburb is the Olympic Village, which was built to house competitors during the 1956 Olympics and then turned over to the housing commission to be made available for public housing.

At half-time in the match between North Heidelberg and Northcote Park, the North Heidelberg president took time out from cleaning away the plates and beer glasses to describe the club as a "nut and bolts" club, for working-class men, most of them as rough as guts.

At the time the president assumed the helm four years ago, the North Heidelberg social rooms hosted four or five fights a week. After a concerted effort to weed out bad influences, North Heidelberg is proud that its social rooms are violence-free.

"You now see kids in these rooms," said the president. "And women!"

Around North Heidelberg's ground, enormous puddles alleviated the concerns of those who, given the debate on global warning, never thought they would see large puddles again. Near one of the largest puddles was a group of supporters that had backed a truck toward the fence.

The truck was lumbered down with outsized drink coolers that kept the afternoon's drink supply at a desirably chilled temperature, not that coolers might have been necessary in air temperatures that reached only 12 degrees. Given the biting winds of southern Australia during winter, it was a reading that spelt coldness of a scale Irish readers might not think imaginable.

The football match was hard and willing. Northcote Park led for the first half, before the closeness of the North Heidelberg players shone through and they steadied enough to win the match.

I then scampered off to the Docklands Stadium, which is known by its commercial name, Telstra Dome, in acknowledgement of a plan for the Telstra telecommunications company. The surface of the oval was perfect, thanks in large part to the roof over the stadium.

A huge percentage - I'm guessing about 80 per cent - of fans at the match between Richmond and the Kangaroos, who until recently were known as North Melbourne, wore club-approved official merchandise, such as jumpers, scarves and beanies.

Thirsty spectators bought a cafe latté or moccachino, while those of the beer-drinking persuasion drank out of plastic cups.

The game was a humdrum affair, failing to attract much interest from theatregoer and diehard fan alike.

In my case, the last quarter of the match was spent trying to write down as many examples of classic matches between the old foes as I could muster. Then I moved on to players who've played at both clubs.

The Kangaroos go by their nickname rather than their geographical name - North Melbourne - not just to annoy me, but to try to curry favour among children in far-flung parts of Australia who might be persuaded to barrack for the royal blue and white.

Lack of geography in the AFL robs it of a vital element. Everyone comes from somewhere and knowing a player's background helps fans to feel some sense of identity.

Like any sports fan, I like to see Australian football played at the highest level. I also, however, like to visit grounds such as North Heidelberg to maintain links with the game's soul.