TOMORROW night James Brayshaw, the former state level cricketer and scion of a noted cricketing family, will face a barrage from Melbourne's insatiable sporting media.
His topic? Not the merits of Muthiah Muralidaran versus Shane Warne, nor the rebel Indian Twenty20 competition.
No, Brayshaw will be dead-batting curly questions about his football club, the impecunious Kangaroos, who by then, might have decided whether their future is in North Melbourne or where the AFL wants them, on the Gold Coast.
Whatever lines Brayshaw utters — no matter how newsworthy — will soon saturate radio airwaves, fill the late TV sports bulletins and, the following day, will adorn the sports and possibly the news pages of Melbourne's daily newspapers.
If it wasn't the Kangaroos filling the breach, it would be Ben Cousins, surely the first Australian sporting figure to have his drug addiction covered Truman Show-style. It might be a Queen's Counsel's interrogations of other West Coast players, or the latest instalment from the Ablett family.
Worthy stories all, but where is the competition for our attention in Melbourne and the southern states? Cricket has done little to deprive footy of its oxygen of publicity in summer.
As AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou boasted to the television networks, footy is the best "reality TV" available. Cricket's best reality program, known as the life of Shane Warne, has been off-air since the leggie legend retired.
Once cricket and football carved up the sporting hemispheres.
Footy started in March, ended in late September. Cricket owned the summer, with some minor competition from tennis and golf. The horses had their 15 days of fame in spring.
Football gradually crept into autumn and spring and, like the cane toad, its presence multiplied. Now, the month of December — traditionally, a period when cricketers are front and centre in our living rooms — has been invaded, indeed conquered, by the rapacious AFL.
Yesterday, the league announced its "off-season" schedule for clubs, which involves the carefully planned photo opportunities of community camps, which stretch from Darwin to South Africa and, ominously for cricket, from December 8 to February 15.
The AFL has seen to it that hardly a day, much less a week, goes by without a draft, a draw or the trumpeting of a new venture (nowadays featuring Kevin Sheedy in an exotic locale).
From a media perspective, there is no longer a "footy season" per se. The AFL now takes it one year at a time.
Unless it has an Ashes series, a World Cup or a team seriously challenging the Australian cricket team's hegemony (or a Warne text message scandal), cricket is struggling for air-time and column inches against football's relentless media imperialism.
This November, The Age dedicated nine sport covers to AFL. Twelve front pages pointed to cricket stories, six to horse racing, two to golf and one to soccer.
In the same 30 days, footy provided the Herald Sun with 15 back-page leads.
Whoever drives the obsession — whether it be readers, PR machines, or news media themselves — it has continued into December.
On Monday just past, Lance Whitnall — no longer on an AFL list — claimed the back page photo of the little paper. The accompanying story detailed Whitnall's three-goal performance in a local match in Darwin.
On five days in November, football commanded the Herald Sun's front page — Cousins on three occasions. St Kilda's move from Moorabbin made it four and, fittingly, an interview with Gary Ablett snr was number five.
As a matter of course, AFL clubs pump out self-promoting "events" throughout December, from the unveiling of recruits to the signing of a new recruiting manager.
The canny Essendon Football Club even trod on the summer game's toes with a release announcing Brett Lee would bowl to Matthew Lloyd and company at Windy Hill.
Cricket dropped the ball, in terms of coverage, because the Sri Lankan tour failed to inspire, the Lankans bringing insufficient competition, or controversy, to the table. It did not help that the first Test in Brisbane started on November 8, or that the Lankans arrived in the middle of a spring racing carnival.
Much of the scheduling is beyond the reach of Cricket Australia, since the Australian summer has to fit in with other countries and a rotating 12-month international timetable.
Whereas the AFL can devise its own "draw" with annual blockbusters and showdowns, cricket is at the mercy of whether the visiting team cuts the mustard with fans.
Cricket's nigh invisibility this month has been caused by a simple lack of action.
The Australian team plays on only four days prior to Boxing Day — in three 50-over one-dayers, plus a Twenty20, both against the underwhelming New Zealand.
It is remarkable that December appears (deliberately?) barren, when there has never been so much international cricket.
In 2008, the Australians will play an unprecedented 19 Tests, plus the usual 30 or so one-day dates. If you allow four days for each Test, that's at least 106 days — even more than the AFL's official 95 match days, including the pre-season competition.
But cricket, for whatever reason, does not command the headlines outside of its "season". The Allan Border Medal, cricket's successful impersonation of Brownlow night, is held in February and is a rare instance when bat and ball receives unseasonal coverage.
Cricket's Hall of Fame is on the same night.
Perhaps, it would receive similar treatment to the AFL's own Hall of Fame were it more strategically placed on the sporting calendar; it could also do with a barbecue stopper, such as the debate over Gary Ablett snr's suitability for inclusion.
Now, cricket is faced with further erosion of its turf with the introduction of the round-ball code as a summer game.
Maybe, in a sense, the barbarian invasions from footy and soccer are precisely what cricket needs to become more pro-active in re-marking — perhaps even reinventing — its summer territory.
The AFL's imperialist design was born of competition. Once it went national, and took on rugby union and rugby league head-to-head, the AFL bosses had to be inventive and aggressive in their incursions into hostile terrain.
Spared such life or death competition, cricket hitherto has not needed to be on the front foot. It should be now.
THE AFL "OFF-SEASON"
CALENDAR
Events that ensure football coverage:
■The trading period, October 8-12.
■The release of the AFL draw, October 27
■AFL commission announces Ben Cousins' 12-month ban, November 19
■The national draft, November 24.
■The pre-season and rookie drafts, December 11.
■Community camps for 16 clubs — December 8 until February 15.
