I've been gorging myself on football these last few weekends, taping the NRL while watching the AFL or vice versa, then sitting up late to catch up. I started watching the Roosters-Tigers epic, for instance, at midnight and finished at 2am, having already watched the Swans-Bulldogs and Wallabies-All Blacks games earlier in the evening.

It turned out to be a bad choice. My heart was racing so fast from the league match that I didn't fall asleep for another hour. I should have watched the Horlicks rugby union match last, relying on the code for its well-known soporific powers.

In my gluttony, I thought I was like a solid bloc of Australian fans, who love all our footy. It turns out, however, that we multi-coders are few. Last Saturday night, nearly 800,000 of my fellow Sydneysiders watched the Roosters-Panthers NRL game, while 41,000 watched the slightly delayed St Kilda-Bulldogs AFL preliminary final. The ratio - 20 to one - was reversed and then exceeded in Melbourne, albeit helped by the fact that the NRL was not shown until midnight.

So, nearly 30 years after the AFL went ‘national' by moving South Melbourne to Sydney, 22 years after league put a team in Brisbane, 13 years after Super League, 12 years after the NRL expanded to Melbourne, the public's taste remains resolutely regional. The AFL's teams in Sydney and Brisbane have enjoyed bursts of popularity, in the biggest games of their biggest seasons, when they have challenged the NRL. But those have been flashes in the pan. Otherwise the AFL is a Victoria-South Australia-Western Australia sport, and it would do okay if it put teams in Darwin and Launceston.

Meanwhile, rugby league's attempts to go into the missionary position have yielded the Western Reds, the Adelaide Rams and the Melbourne Storm. Enough said. If it had instead spread to the central, north or south coasts of NSW, not to mention the western slopes or Riverina, or established a second team in Brisbane on a firmer footing than the sacrificed South Queensland Crushers, any of those clubs would no doubt flourish as quickly as the Gold Coast Titans.

So what gives? Clearly each competition's attempt to ‘go national' is a matter, for the average fan, of profound indifference.

There are obvious reasons at corporate level to build a pseudo-national presence, to increase the income generated by nationally-distributed television rights deals. These, however, have turned out to be more persuasive strategies in the boardroom than they are in our living rooms. Most directors of companies swallow the standard mantras that they must expand or perish; that to stand still is to go backwards; that they must have a ‘vision'. Why is the AFL bringing a second team to a city that can't be bothered watching a preliminary final? Likewise the NRL's expansion plans? Well, sometimes it seems they do it just because that's what boards are expected to do.

From my well-worn couch, I think national diversity is something to admire. I like all codes, but not many people do. So what? Sydney is a league town. Melbourne is a rules town.

You used to be able to buy completely different lollies and beer depending on which state you were in. As the recent federal election results showed, our states are populated by very different kinds of people. That may be unpleasant news for the masters of the codes' corporate universes, but they are living in an alternative reality if they think our tastes can all be ironed out and made ‘national'. I, for one, think our stubborn differences are something to celebrate and preserve. But jeez, that number, 41,000, last Saturday night - it's something for the Greater Western Sydney crew to ponder.