Australian Rules Football > American Football

Australian Rules Football, called AFL, is one of the most exciting games I have ever seen. Its fast paced, high scoring and momentum can change instantly. The crowd is electric - more like a soccer game. The field is round, there is a mix of punch-passing (at least that's what I am calling it) and kicking. The the star players make $1million per year. That's closer to the NFL league minimum than what stars like Aaron Rodgers and Calvin Johnson are making - crazy!

Real fans wear scarves, right Jim?  

Last Friday, we went to the semi-finals at the old olympic stadium. The crowd was just over 40,000. That is one of the big differences to the US, crowd size - there are only 4 million people in Sydney, this was a BIG turnout. Rugby is probably more popular here than AFL.

The game is not hard to pick up, but there are no announcers so if you don't know the rules you can get lost on some of the calls - a lot of the serious/old timer fans have headphones in to listen to the broadcast, kind of remanded me of Nascar in that way. There is also a lot of yelling at the refs/players just like in the NFL, but the insults involve words like wanker, bloody and other assorted curse words that I probably shouldn't list here :)

The ref throwing the ball inbound, even the refs wear shot shorts

I only really took photos in the 1Q when Melbourne was on our side of the field. So this is one of the roos first goals. You can see the yellow ball right above the 1st level of seats, kicked by the red headed roo (in blue/white) in the bottom right corner.

Notice the goal posts - 6 points for a kick though the middle, 1 point for the side goals

Again we were on the wrong side of the field, here are the Melbourne Kangroos warming up. It was a strange mix of stretching/tackling. I do wonder if there is a correlation between toughness and length of shorts. These guys are tough, pretty sure a dude broke his finger/wrist in the last few minutes and showed just a little pain on his face and jogged off the field. We Americans would have had at least one commercial break for something like that.

Who wears short shorts, these dudes

The final score Swanies 136, Kangroos 65. I told you it was fast-paced! The poor roo fans were crushed - especially with the Grand Final this weekend in their home town.

The Grand Final (think Super Bowl) is on Saturday at 2:30 in Melbourne. We will be watching from Sydney, maybe on the jumbo screen from the cricket grounds. Go SWANS!