Dear AFL

I am writing to plead for a distraction from my family on Good Friday.

Don't get me wrong, no one thinks it's appropriate we celebrate the birth of the Easter Bunny more than me.

However, I firmly believe that a full day of talking to any group of people is not a day off.

It is work. Hard work.

At every other social event, I can usually turn on the TV and watch some football.

With the iPad app, I can now even do this at other people's houses. This has the wonderful side effect of me never being invited over again.

Good Friday however is still a problem. For six years, I managed to convince Aunty Janice that my taped version of the 2000 Preliminary Final between Melbourne and North was live.

Thanks to Channel Seven's refusal to upgrade to HD, this ruse worked for far longer than it should have.

Eventually, it became simply beyond belief that a Melbourne victory was occurring in this decade and it was all over.

This Good Friday, millions of Australians were trapped in conversations with people they've designed their lives to avoid.

AFL, we don't want to hear that cousin Darren is doing well at that uni course we can never remember or that Uncle Nathan is probably going to pull through.

We need football. We need to be able to say 'oh, is that the time? Let's flick the game on and not talk to each other.'

Really, this is not too much to ask.

Thanking you in advance.

Titus