Rugby 7s in the Gold Coast

On our road trip through the States (well before we got to Australia) we got an email from Oscar about a Rugby 7s getaway with some of his mates (yep I said it). He basically said, you're going, its going to be awesome. He didn't need to twist our arms, we were all in. The weekend did not disappoint! Our trip to the Hong Kong 7s in March is being discussed - if you are interested, let me know!

I didn't know much about rugby before this weekend (and I'm not gonna lie, I still don't know that much, but I can hold my own now). Seven's is a different variety of the traditional rugby I had seen, it much more fast paced that typical 15s. There are two 7 minute halves with 7 players on the field for each team. This was a tournament, so there were games from about 9am to 8pm Saturday and Sunday.

The other awesome thing about the weekend is that everyone dresses up. Australian's love a good costume, we should do more of this in the states! Probably 90% of attendees are dressed up. I tried to snap a few photos of great costumes, but I had just gotten the iPhone 6 and was terrified of drunkly shattering it.

Here are our costumes in all their glory - grass skirts, umbrella hats and AUSTRALIA love, oh and Matt's monkey. My sorority days came in handy with the painting of these letters.

Put some bottoms on Jules! 

We had a great time also spelling other words.

Our boys did not disappoint! 

And as the day went on there was a little of this... The other favourite was two A's (AA) walking around together with massive amount of drinks in hand.

These boys had a strong neon Sunday showing.  My other best dressed were entire family of about 15 that dressed up in different Alice in Wonderland charters. Then there were a group of Umpa Lumpa's with Willy Wonka.

Sunday Funday with these bros all in neon - there were about 25 of them 

This poor dude was at his bachelor party...and his lovely friends dressed him.

Not a great photo, but you can see how everyone is dressed up - crayons and pirates

Enough of costumes, back to the rugby. Here is America warming up. It was really cool to be able to get up close and personal to the teams for warm-ups!

I had, I man have, a serious crush on this dude.

Here are the Kenyan's - These dudes are HUGE! They had a massive support section in tow, but didn't prevail.

I don't know what this is called, when they lift someone up to catch the incoming ball, but I thought it was funny. Here are the South African making it look easy!

And then America won! Well, they won their pool, which I think was the third teir group, but they still won. So clearly I decided to take some selfies with them. I'm officially the worst selfie taker....there is no reason the person taking a selfie should not be in the photo or smiling....I have some work to do

These Aussies were obsessed with Carlin Isles (left) - the fastest man in 7s 

Carlin Isles is an native of Ohio. He is a fast dude and people love to watch him and heckle him if he is not running fast enough.

Thanks to Matt (bottom right) for not making me feel so creepy hanging out to see my rugby BF.

Other things I noticed at my first rugby tournament - the kiss cam or fan cam is awesome in Australia - anything goes - I mean anything. People would be kicked out of the venue in the states for way less. I tried to record some of it, but no luck.

Oh yeah, in between games we got some beach time too.

The gold coast beach goes on forever - its beautiful! 

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!