Australia's favorite sport, "footy"

Australians love two things: sports and abbreviations.  It's only fitting, then, that they give their favorite sport a nickname, "footy."  Australian rules football, or AFL, seems like a weird combination of different sports we're familiar with in America.  Except for having no laces, the ball is basically the same as the ol' pigskin.  It's played on an enormous oval cricket pitch with 18 players per side.  You score by kicking the ball through the goalposts on either end--six points for the center goal and one point for the outer ones.  Passing is done either with an underhand throw, like rugby, or by drop kicking the ball.  Like any good contact sport, there is plenty of tackling (and occasional fighting) in between.  The rules are pretty simple.  The game strategy, though, is not.

I got my first taste of footy with MUSEX.  We got tickets for only $5, and headed to the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) for a Saturday night game between the Melbourne Demons and St. Kilda Saints (that juxtaposition is just a coincidence).  The MCG is a huge--scratch that, enormous--100,000-seat arena next to the river just south of the CBD.  It's been around since the mid-1800s (renovated, of course).  They say the waiting list for cricket season tickets there is so long most people die before ever making it to the top.  Kinda like Fenway, huh?

The MCG is titanic.

Melbourne in blue/red (far); umpires/linesman in yellow (center), St. Kilda in white (front)

Because I'm geographically closer to Melbourne proper, I took the Demons to win, even though they were the definite underdog (St. Kilda was in second place).  It took me a little while to figure out what was going on, but eventually I had the hang of the rules and how the scoring worked.  Still, it just looked like a free-for-all, with seemingly much less structure than any American sport (especially NFL).  And oh, did I mention it goes on forever?  30-minute running quarters!  We didn't actually stay for the fourth, when St. Kilda finally won, because we went to an after party on Brunswick.

I must admit, most of the time they're just fiddling around in the middle of the field.  Since the stadium is so big, you're a mile away from the field, and after a while the game can get pretty boring.  But when they get near the goal, the whole atmosphere in the stadium changes.  It's the same feeling you get when the puck goes near the goal in hockey--I was jumping out of my seat screaming for a team I didn't know existed an hour before.  I had a great time.

You'll get a general sense of the "free-for-all" gameplay form this video.

Before the game they paraded a couple 'we will remember' banners for ANZAC (armed-forces memorial) day earlier that week.  Expecting the patriotism to continue, I was quite shocked that they didn't even sing the national anthem after that.  I mean, at least at the Grand Prix they managed a half-assed rendition.  It's weird coming from a place like the USA where we take every opportunity we can get to proudly sing the SSB and turn sports into huge displays of patriotism (case and point: baseball).  I guess Australians just don't associate sports and patriotism in the same way, which is, in my opinion, too bad.