The roar of an Australian Rules football crowd is one of the most evocative in Australian sport. However, away from the stadia used in the AFL, the supporter's voice, either individually or collectively, is rarely heard beyond the white noise of talkback radio. That is set to change with the formation of the AFLFA - the AFL Fans Association - the first co-ordinated effort to give AFL fans a say in how the indigenous game is run.

The AFLFA is holding an establishment meeting in Melbourne on Sunday, the first step in a process to become a recognised voice in footy's official conversation.

Brian Clarke, the driving force behind the AFLFA's formation, spoke exclusively to BackPageLead this week about the need for a supporters' organisation and what it hopes to achieve.

"We want to bring people from all over Australia and give them a say in how their game is run and we want to be able to affect change," Clarke explained. "If you talk to the average fan and ask them if they're happy with the way the game's going, the answer's often ‘no', people are unhappy, and we want that to be recognised."

With record membership levels, a lucrative new media contract and two new franchises on the go, the AFL could be considered a runaway success. However, as Clarke points out: "What is in the best interests of the AFL is not necessarily in the best interests of Australian Rules football."

Despite the game's popularity and financial strength, Clarke, and others, are concerned that the game is now heading in a direction that is not to the taste of all supporters, and they currently have little or no means to register their disaffection. "The concerns are from a number of levels," Clarke explained. "For a start, there's the governance of the game, the Match Review Panel, the Laws of the Game Committee and the consultation process."

"The game isn't sick, but it's got a runny nose," he said. "I think there are issues that need to be dealt with and I think there are very able people out there who are capable of contributing to solutions."

The key issues Clarke suggests need addressing coalesce into a general position that without input from supporters of Australian Rules football, the game is in danger of growing into something unfamiliar, generic and vanilla.

Chief amongst these are rule changes that, in Clarke's opinion, are altering some of the unique characteristics of Australian Rules football. Or the increasing disparity between the rich and poor in the AFL and how this is undermining the established equalisation mechanisms designed to give each club a ‘fair go.' There is also a fear that unless Australian Rules football's custodians have greater independence from the administrators of its professional league, the game will cease to have the appeal that drew supporters like Clarke to it in the first place.

"It will all begin with Sunday's inaugural meeting," Clarke explained. "Here we will try to establish what the goals, aims and objectives of the association are to be. We've been careful for this not to be prescriptive; we need input from everybody into this process. At the moment we exist on Facebook, where there are 700 followers. Our target is to have 20,000 members by the end of the year."

"As we grow, we will poll to see if there's a demand for a full-time representative. If so, we would look to introduce a contribution as part of the membership - something small, like $5 or $10. I believe you can have a full-time person who can go out there and represent the fans and that's what there needs to be to enact real change. The website will give us a 24/7 presence but a fulltime person will be crucial."

The AFLFA will set itself an early goal of establishing exactly what the general views of supporters actually are. "You're never going to get consensus," Clarke said, "but what you want to do is find out what people are really thinking out there in the community. We see things like the Herald Sun's Fan's Footy Survey as a good indication, but we want to have more regular polling, especially when a key issue comes up.

"We're going to set up a website where we can poll fans on a range of issues so we can record what our members say so, instead of the media generalising about what supporters think, they can come to the site and get an accurate indication of what they really believe. Again, we might not get consensus, but if we can get enough people to join and we can regularly find out what their views are and give them a say, we can be successful."

Armed with this information, the next step is for the AFLFA to have an input in the decision making process. And, as Clarke makes clear: "You can't do that if you're always on a soapbox or just bagging the AFL at every opportunity. You have to recognise the good the AFL has done, for example with the Racial Vilification Code and a whole range of other things."

The AFLFA will use as its template the AFLPA and the Umpires' Association and draw on the expertise of similar supporter advocacy groups in the US and the UK. "From little things big things grow. Like the Players' Association, like the Umpires' Association, we expect to start small. There's a hockey association aligned to the NHL that has managed to get a few runs on the board and there's also a well-established supporters' association in English soccer. We're in the process of setting up dialogue with those to help ensure we're set up well from the start."

Clarke's hope is that once the AFLFA is well established, it will significantly improve the means by which the AFL is able to consult with its most populous stakeholder group. In the example of changes to the rules of the game, Clarke does not believe the existing consultation mechanism is sufficient. At the moment, supporters are invited to communicate their feedback through their clubs following the release of a Laws of the Game Committee consultation paper. In the future, the AFLFA could provide a much more co-ordinated response on behalf of a large number of fans, and, possibly, even take a seat on the Committee itself.

In recent months the AFL administration has engaged with an array of stakeholders to address a wide range of issues. Media rights holders were cajoled into agreeing a record broadcast deal. Governments have been lobbied to support capital works or the establishment of new franchises. While the players remain locked in spiteful negotiations with their paymasters over their relative value.

In all such dealings there is an implicit understanding that the AFL administration is acting in the best interests of supporters. The AFLFA will soon be able to tell them if that is the case.

(The meeting to establish the AFLFA takes place at 1pm this Sunday, June 26 at Young & Jackson's, on the corner of Swanston & Flinders Streets, Melbourne. For more information visit www.facebook.com/aflfans.)