Okay, here's the deal for everyone wondering about the AFL website and streaming demons games.
Firefox and/or IE is fine, but what you want to do is stream them from the bigpond TV site, not the AFL site. The way to do this is as follows:
Go to AFL.com.au, then click on "matches", next to "latest video" on the right side of the screen.
Then select the quarter you want and a new window will open and you'll be streaming via Bigpondvideo.
Now, the last thing you need to realize is when there is a heap of traffic, the stream will cut out. So, you need to watch the game when there isn't. Late at night, early morning, or during the week is best. The final piece of the puzzle is that you CAN rip the stream using any traditional method but you will have to do it when there is no traffic or your download will cut out.
Hope that helps. The AFL website is a mess (as is anything Telstra touches) but once you get to know it is very useful.
BTW I have a 20 megabit per second download speed so it might be best to rip it overnight if you don't have a big pipe.