quicko: the footy

I went to a "footy" match awhile back, and this post is all I've got regarding the entire realm of SPORTS. Sorry.

Hmm. The footy, I'm pretty sure, refers to Australian Rules Football, but they don't call it ARF. It's quite different from American football. It's one of the bigger sports down under, along with rugby and cricket and ... I'm pretty sure there's something else played in a stadium. League Something?

Anyway, I went to see the Sydney Swans (who in the world named them? even someone stuck on alliteration surely could have done better -- even the Swordfish would have been an improvement!) play the Brisbane Lions. I was generally confused throughout the game, though I did acquire a few ideas regarding play: two teams, going for opposite ends, using a ball, lots of running and jumping (kind of like kangaroos hopping around the field), on an oval, big poles at either end, getting the ball through the poles is good, with more points (6?) between the middle ones and less (2?) between the outer ones. I think they switched sides at halftime, too.

Football is a very colorful game in Australia. First off the teams have different colors (red and white Swans vs. orange? Lions), and then the four refs (green?), and then the odd ones in highlighter yellow who I couldn't figure out what they were doing. They were highly visible, though.

But besides the game, the atmosphere of going is really half (most?) the fun. It's pretty much like a baseball game sort of crowd, but sub meat pies for hot dogs and double the beer. Oh, and take out the wandering lemon ice chill sellers; you've got to get your own. There's not as much in-house entertainment, but in my experience, your Aussie friends are quite likely to provide plenty of that.

And, yes, contrary to popular expectation, I did catch the score: 114-53, Sydney.