What is The Footy Expat?

Welcome to The Footy Expat blog!

To start off, I thought I’d get straight to the bottom of why we’re here and explain what The Footy Expat is all about.

The word expat loosely describes someone who lives away from home, with perhaps the best example being the loads of Aussies over in London at any one time. If you’ve been an expat yourself or known a few in your time, you’ll be aware of the crippling homesickness many struggle with living in a foreign city. The term Footy Expat describes the same phenomenon many AFL fans experience when they move away from Melbourne and other traditional football “homes”. In this case, it’s trying to build a new life in the strange environment where Aussie Rules is not the dominant sport.

Why does The Footy Expat exist?

While the game has come a long way since the mid 90s when my Expat journey began – and you’ll hear a lot more about that throughout this blog – I believe fellow fans moving into the AFL’s expansion states are still in for a shock. Poor free-to-air TV coverage, rare opportunities to attend their club’s games and a weaker footy culture in general are just some of the hits they’ll take.

Having felt first hand just how tough this transition is, I wanted to spare future generations of Expats the pain I went through. To do that I created The Footy Expat website, with the aim of helping AFL fans in Queensland and New South Wales stay connected, build a better football environment and celebrate what footy means to them.

Footy Expats are more than just fans

Most importantly, The Footy Expat is built on the belief that we are more than ordinary fans. Aside from appreciating the game on a different level and seeing things from a unique perspective, Expats are crucial to the future of our game and I’ll explain exactly why as we go.

What you can expect

In this blog I’ll regularly touch on all three of my goals, however most of the focus will be on simply celebrating the game we all love. I’ll give plenty of advice on how to stay connected and what can be done to build a better footy environment, but most of all I want to explore the bigger picture of what footy means to all of us. The memories created, moments shared and lessons learnt…all the wonderful stuff that’s lost occasionally in the hunger for finals wins and premiership success.

As a final note, while writing I sincerely hope to hear back from you, the reader. I’d love to swap stories, share experiences and get your views on all sorts of things, so please don’t hesitate to comment on anything that grabs your interest.

Once again, welcome to The Footy Expat blog. I hope you enjoy it and get something out of it along the way as well.