The Australian Football League (AFL) may be confusing for foreigners, but it is one of the nation’s most important contributions to sports. And if there was a documentary that plays to the Australian Football League’s dreams of global relevance, it’s Final Siren.
Broken into four episodes, Final Siren is meant to sell Australian rules to an international audience. Lavishly produced, with enough swearing to make a barkeep blush, Final Siren follows seven AFL players across the men’s 2025 season. Some are heading into finals (playoffs). Others seemed tortured by defeat. All are at the top of their game, and yet the prospect of failure follows them like a shadow. The mental — as well as physical — scars of this violent collision sport are foregrounded by both the players and their partners. This is undermined by seemingly scripted exchanges and banal lines of inquiry from the journalists involved.
Final Siren papers over the league’s parochial foundations, troubling labor relations, and systemic racism. As a result, the final product lacks the courage of its convictions. Rather than showcasing Australia’s cultural uniqueness to a global audience, Final Siren bears the fingerprints of corporate executives hamstrung by the cringe they feel toward the cultures they grew up with. In its desperation, the documentary evacuates the game of its meaning, working-class cultural roots, and historical complexity.
There is enough compelling material in Final Siren for those already invested in the game to stay the course for all four episodes. Others, however, may find the journey more challenging.
The beauty of Australian Rules football resides in its distinctive class-based relation to place — first to Melbourne, then to other parts of the Australian continent. But that has never been enough for those running the code.
Founded in 1835, almost fifty years after the British invasion and ensuing colonization of the continent, Melbourne grew slowly until gold…
Auteur: Jack Hynes
