You simply can’t understand how football (of the Australian Rules variety) so completely permeates the fabric of Melbourne (and Victorian) life unless you’ve lived there.
And even then you can only appreciate it as an outsider looking in.
When I moved down from Brisbane the variation in the question told the tale: no longer “Do you follow a team?” but “Which team do you follow?”
Thus it is the default belief amongst Melburnians that everyone is a part of the football fraternity until they identify themselves as otherwise.
They usually receive the same uncomprehending stares that were directed toward those who announced themselves as vegetarians in the 1960s. “You don’t eat… meat…, okay, how about some chicken?”
If you don’t follow football in Melbourne today many would sympathetically just assume that it is because you followed South Melbourne or Fitzroy and are now consigned to lost and tribeless existence.
Some of the teams hold dubious records of success, yet are unstintingly supported by followers who have never seen their team win a premiership.
Their loyalty and hope sometimes seem in stark contrast to cultures of non-achievement by their clubs, but still support never wavers.
You never change your support from one team to another.
Though six (and soon eight) of the teams in the ‘AFL’ are based outside of Victoria the usage of the phrase ‘interstate’ rather that ‘non-victorian’ is an indicator that the vast and overwhelming majority of Victorians would prefer a competition composed of the Melbourne based clubs, along with Geelong, to any sort of pretension of sharing their game with Australia.
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