Footy Fanaticism or Adelaide -- Day Three

May 25th, Sunday.
Yesterday Chris and I woke up and walked into the city to catch our free bus to A.A.M.I stadium to watch an Australian Rules Football match. Now, if you don't know anything about the AFL (and I'm sure you don't) I can't possibly make you understand it in words. However, here are a few points that might give you some idea:

The game combines elements of soccer and rugby.

Each team has eighteen players on the field, which is a giant oval.

The object of the game is to kick the ball (shaped like a rugby ball or a larger American football) through the middle of four uprights--thats a score of six. However, if an opposing player touches the ball as it goes through than it only counts as one point. Also, if the ball is kicked through the outside uprights, it results in a single point. Needless to say, these are generally high scoring games.

More aborigines play Aussie Rules than any other sport in the country.

The AFL is huge in South Australia and Victoria, but not so much in the rest of the country where Rugby is a bigger deal.

Ok, if you want to know more you have to find out yourself.

The game we saw was the Port Adelaide Power vs. the Sydney Swans. The Power has a better name, but the Swans have a better fight song. We got to the stadium early, so we crossed the street to eat some lunch in a giant mall. After poking around a bit, we headed back in to the stadium and found our seats near the field off to one side of the goal. As we sat down we were treated to the "curtain raiser" game of Indigenous teams playing a quick game. There was something that just felt out of place in modern day Australian society about watching a bunch of Abos play football for a crowd of mostly whites as pre-game entertainment. They seemed to enjoy themselves however, and a big to-do was made the whole day about Aborigines in the AFL.

After the "curtain-raiser" came the most mindbogglingly hilarious spectacle of young, mostly women waving flags and doing what I suppose could be called "dancing" to a terrible techo song that informed the crowd that "this is how we party", over and over again. Imagine a massive gathering of high school color guard/flag core girls trying to pretend like that are in an Usher video on BET and you have some idea of how ridiculous the whole thing was.

But the Aussie's love their Footy, and this was apparently all part of a ritual. To understand how "hard" these people "get up" for Footy just imagine how American's treat Superbowl Sunday, and you've got a bit of an idea how it is at every AFL game. In other words, they really get into it. People cheered like made at every Port Power score (we sat with them) and booed even harder at every Sydney kick and score. There was also and incredible amount of profanity thrown around--and there were kids everywhere. Footy is as much a family affair as anything in Australia, and I guess most people just get used to the outbursts.

The Power struggled most of the game, but eventually came from behind only to lose in the last quarter by eleven points. Behind us was a hilarious older man who screamed out at various intervals:

After a bogus penalty: "It's a man's game you idiot!"

As the Power was doing well: "Come on Port, show some class!"

As the Power did poorly: "I don't believe this!"

Randomly: "Don't give the ball to him, he's a useless pr*ck!" or "This violates the rules of the game!"

Along with a handful of other, more colorful phrases.

Since the Power lost, everybody left a bit disgruntled but the general feeling was that the game was a fine spot of football all around. I couldn't have agreed more.

The sun set during the game, and it really turned into a full day affair at 36 minutes quarters, but it was fun never-the-less. Today, Sunday, we are in the airport about to fly for our final Australian destination: Melbourne. The airport has free WiFi. South Australia, the free internet state. After this its probably back to libraries, but we'll see. We learned our lesson after last time and went ahead and made reservations at a hotel in the city. So next post should see us settle in the heart of Australia's other big city.