One more Aussie experience!!!

Wow! I’m posting two days in a row!!! Amazing what happens when you have a little more time and more activities out of the ordinary…

Earlier in the week, I was invited to join in a surprise activity for someone. As it turned out, there was no surprise left by Wednesday but the activity still happened. Since Ryan and Amy are leaving for home in a couple of weeks, Amy wanted to give her husband a chance to go see a live AFL game at the Telstra Stadium before going home. Ryan has been talking about this quite often and there are only a few games at this stadium during the year.

For those of you whom this means nothing to, Telstra Stadium is the largest facility in New South Wales; with a capacity of over 80,000 people – and this after changes that make it hold less. For the closing ceremonies of the 2000 Olympic Games, there were just under 115,000 in there. It’s a large facility!

Since most of you know nothing about authentic Australian sports, AFL (Aussie Rules Football) would be around the top. The basic idea of the game is to kick a ball through two upright poles at the end of the field. To get close enough to do this, you may kick the ball, bump it (holding it in one hand while hitting it with the other), or run with the ball (but only for a limited distance before bouncing it on the ground). While you’re doing this, the other team is trying their hardest to tackle you. If the ball is in the air on it’s way to you, you may jump and climb over the back of your opponent in an attempt to get higher than him; and if you catch the ball, there’s no penalty for using your feet and knees on the other guy’s back, but if you don’t catch the ball, there may be a penalty resulting in the other team gaining possession of the ball. Basically the only rule in tackling is that you can’t hit above the shoulders. You are also expected to be pushing and shoving your opponent at all times; whether he has the ball or not – although full on tackles are not the norm if the ball isn’t nearby. It’s a fast paced, extremely rough sport. Imagine body checks like ice hockey (ok, at a lower speed than on ice skates – but the same style of body check), tackles like CFL or NFL football, running like soccer, diving catches like baseball or football, and a bunch of wrestling moves throwing bodies around however possible. Now if that’s not enough, do it on the largest playing field of any team sport (except polo in which the horses are the ones doing the running), have no substitutes or line changes and no down time between plays unless there is a goal, the ball goes out of bounds, or if the ref determines that the ball has stopped moving due to the carrier being tackled and covered by a mass of bodies. Now do it all with no protective equipment! There you have it folks, authentic Aussie sport.

So, Ryan and I went to watch a game last night. We had Sydney Swans fans – one of whom had coached two of the professional players back in their teen years, on one side of us and Collingwood Magpie fans who had made the two hour flight for the event on the other side. It was great! In classic Aussie fashion, they were both friendly to us even though they were yelling at each other about the refs calls on the field and about the score, which was quite lopsided in favour of the visiting team. Now with that long preamble, here are a couple of pictures from game day.





Here we are before the big game. The players on the field are playing in a national youth competition. They played a game before the pros got on the field.






Here's the view from our seats. We were in the second row!









If I didn't know better, looking at the colours, I would have thought this was an international sporting competition being held in Canada. Red is the team colour for the hometown Sydney Swans.