Our First "Footy" Game (by Anthony)

This last weekend we went to our first "footy" game. Footy here refers to "Australian rules" football. The game isn't played anywhere else in the world, and they are proud of that. To say that the Australians enjoy their football would be a significant understatement. Most large US cities have no more than one sport franchise in the same league - one NBA team, one MLB team, etc. Melbourne has 10 AFL teams. I'm serious. In fact, the teams are named after suburbs - some of which are only 3 miles apart. You might think that having so many teams would hurt attendance, but a typical game has 60,000+ people in the stands. It isn't unusual for a game to sell out the Melbourne Cricket Grounds (MCG) which holds 100,000 people!

We went to a game between two Melbourne suburbs at the MCG to get the full experience. There were about 80,000 people. We have seen the game on TV many times (it's on about one of every three channels) but have yet to really figure out what is going on. The game uses an American style football, but the players run around in a style more similar to soccer. They are allowed to carry the ball, dribble the ball on the ground like a basketball, throw the ball to other players, and kick the ball. Oh, and of course they tackle each other with a high degree of ferocity (describing it as a body slam seems more appropriate), and they constantly fight with each other on the field - like in a really good hockey game. They do all of these things with seemingly no pattern - it's no wonder we have no idea what is going on!

Here are a few pictures we took of the field and stadium. Note that the field is a huge oval - approximately 180 yards long and 150 yards wide! Crazy.


At the game, we watched intently in an attempt to figure out the rules. We were able to determine a couple of things - most notably, that there aren't many rules. The game is incredibly physical (they consider the NFL to be tame), but in true Australian fashion the players wear no padding.



One nice thing about the game (and having few rules I suppose) is that there are very few interruptions of play. In fact, the action hardly ever stopped - no time outs, no fouls, no stopping the clock every time the ball goes out of bounds - just constant football. It's a phenomenon I've not seen in US sports, but a 30-minute quarter in AFL actually takes just 30 minutes to play! Bizarre.

Here's a little video we got - it shows one of the plays from beginning to end and then a little of the stadium. Kristi is beginning to be quite handy with the video feature of our digital camera and making homemade videos. Hope you enjoy them! (I'm sure there will be more to come.)