What is Footyology?
Footyology is an Australian-rules football analysis site founded in mid-2017 by Rohan Connolly, who spent thirty years at The Age until June 2017 after starting at the Sun News-Pictorial at eighteen, with radio on 3AW from 1996 and SEN from 2012. It is free to read and funded by reader patronage, and describes itself as “fiercely independent and determined not to descend into clickbait”.[1]
What does it cover?
Analysis and previews of the AFL season — the site’s core — plus a set of non-football “screen, sound and society” segments, and two podcasts, the Footyology Podcast and Footyology Final Siren. Connolly writes the bulk of it (over 1,100 posts), with more than forty named contributors including Martin Flanagan and Michelangelo Rucci.[1] [2]
What is its reach and standing?
No audited audience figure is published. The site’s About page gives Connolly’s own following — 65,400 on X, 17,100 on Facebook, 2,100 on Instagram — and the site funds itself through Patreon at A$8.50 a month; the patron count is not public. Its standing rests on Connolly’s record rather than on scale: a thirty-five-year football journalist writing at length, unattached to the league or a broadcaster.[1]
Since when?
“Since we began in mid-2017,” in the site’s own words — Connolly left The Age in June 2017 and launched Footyology the same winter.[1]
Why does it matter in Australian football?
Because it is one of the few AFL outlets that is neither the league’s own channel nor a rights-holder’s. For a reader who needs an independent, bylined assessment of a player or a season, a Connolly column is that assessment written by someone with thirty years at the state’s paper of record, now outside it.[1]
References
- Footyology — About. Accessed September 2026.
- Footyology — home (podcasts, current coverage). Accessed September 2026.