Lovers of literature attending the AFL Grand Final tomorrow will find the AFL Record to have a slightly more literary bent than is usually the case. Published in the Record will be the winner of a short story competition organised by the AFL to “promote short story fiction about Australian football” and to “fantasise about the future of Australian football”. The competition brief invited submissions of no more than 2,000 words about football as it might be in 2022, a world in which Australian rules football is a global game staging its second-ever world championship competition.
As is traditionally the case with the AFL Record, this edition has been widely available at retail outlets throughout this Grand Final week. The competition winner is Peter Lynch, whose story begins: “It was late November 2022, and there was just over an hour til the first bounce. The second ever AFL World Rules final.” (Read the whole story.)