Footy

We attended our first game of Australian Rules Football last night, loving nicknamed "footy": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Rules_Football. We live about one block away from the Telstra Dome, a large sporting field with a retractable roof that can hold just over 50,000 people. I thought it might be bad living right next to such a monstrosity - that there would be lots of noise and traffic during events - but it's so unobtrusive that I had previously thought that they weren't even hosting events there at all. I was wondering how they actually make money there, but I found out that events are held there all the time without any sign of noise or congestion to speak of - excellent.

We attended this event at the invitation of a couple that we met through the meetup.com event about a month ago, Lindsey and John. This is not the couple I just introduced, this is the couple that took us to the beach (damn sunburns) a few weeks ago. They had two friends (an Aussie couple from work) along as well.

We got there at about 6:30pm, about 45 minutes before the game started to get good seats since it's general admission. I find it strange that the footy game is general admission while the movie theaters assign seats...I digress. So, we got seats at the field level right at center field - pretty much perfect. And we were slightly under the overhang of the balcony above which allowed us to avoid the rain when it started about halfway through the game. It only rained for a few minutes anyway, but I was happy to have cover.

To start, the field is huge. I see why they use 18 players from each team to play a game - there's no way to cover the field otherwise. The field is a giant grassy oval - Kane estimated it to be about twice the size of an American football field (lord knows I have no idea). Footy is not American football. It's not soccer and it's not rugby. It's a whole different game entirely from any of these games. There is a ball which is oval shaped - sort of like a football but smaller and with no points at the ends. There are goals at either end of the field, but instead of there being two goal posts to make one goal area, there are four posts making three goal areas. If you kick the ball between the middle two posts, it's 6 points, between the outer posts is only 1.

You can pass the ball by either kicking it in the air (drop kick) or by hand passing, which is like serving underhand in volleyball; you can't just toss it to someone. There are no time outs and the game does not stop at all unless the ball goes out of bounds or a goal is scored at which time they either throw the ball back in or do a jump ball type thing, respectively. It is virtually continuous for the entire 4 quarters (with 5-15 minute breaks between quarters) and it looks exhausting. To get the ball from the other team you either tackle the person with the ball (no pads) or intercept, and these two actions are often intermixed. It's basically complete chaos on the field for four 25-ish minute quarters.

My favorite part of the game was the shouting coming from the fathers, brothers, and other random men (and women, they're just not as loud). It was great. Standard heckling and anger at what they envision to be poor calls by the umpires was ever present and just as entertaining as the game itself. There was one guy a couple rows behind us that had the perfect coliseum heckling voice: loud, gruff, assertive. He kept yelling insults at whichever team that he didn't like, but he kept all the abuse to a G rating which made it even funnier. "You idiot!", "Get up you wimp!", and simply, "Girl!", were among his most commonly used taunts, though he did venture toward some more obscure name-calling with "Mongrel!" and "You're such a twit!". It was great, the crowds here are excellent.

We both had a good time, despite it being a bit to cold for my taste (they left the damn retractable roof open for some reason). They do the standard coliseum-style food: hot dogs, chips, french fries, soda, beer, but they actually had a bit larger of a menu including meat pies (very popular here, it looks like dog crap in a pot pie), burgers, ice cream bars, and a few other things. I was sad to see nachos missing from the menu, but that crap is poison anyway. I even saw a veggie burger on one of the menus, though we made a point to eat before hand to avoid that junk.

All in all it was fun and, though I don't think I'm going to start attending religiously, it was a nice event to go to with friends once in a while (like an A's game), and a good old fashioned Aussie experience. After the game we hung out at John and Lindsey's place, ordered some pizza, watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and played with their newly acquired didgeridoo. It was a good night, see wiki for info on the strange native Australian instrument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didgeridoo.