Australian Rules Football

On Sunday, Chris and I spent the afternoon at The Gabba watching our first ever match of Australian Rules Football. Sunday's game saw the Brisbane Lions taking on the Adelaide Crows. We were really excited to go to the game, and it was a bit of a last minute decision as we bought our tickets late on Saturday night. In Australia, Aussie Rules competes with rugby as two of the main sporting events. Chris and I like Aussie Rules better than rugby, probably because it's a fast and physical game...much like hockey.

After a rip roaring start to the season, the Lions have gone downhill and stayed there. The final score on Sunday was 97-104, in favour of the Crows. So far this season, the Lions have 6 wins and 14 losses and only 2 more games left in the season. Even though it's been a rough year for the Lions, Chris and I have really enjoyed watching a brand new sport.

I will attempt to provide a brief idea of how the game works. The game is played on an oval shaped field that is about 150m long and 135m wide. At each end there are 4 posts. The two end posts are short and known as the behind posts. The two middle posts are high and known as the goal posts. If the ball is kicked between the goal posts, a team gets 6 points. If they get the ball between a goal post and a behind post, they get 1 point. The ball can only be kicked in, not carried.

There are 18 players from each team on the field at one time. They can kick the ball to each other as well as punch it with their hand. They cannot throw the ball. Also, the players cannot hold onto the ball. If they get tackled, they have to throw the ball away or else they risk a penalty. There are many more rules, but I won't go into too many details. If you want to know more, Wikipedia has a good summary of the rules and the game in general.

The season runs from March to August and then the Grand Final take place in September. The Grand Final is always played in Melbourne, regardless of where the teams are from. The stadium where the finals take place is called the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and holds just over 100 000 people, so it must be quite a place to have a sporting final!

Aussie Rules is a fast and physical game and is a lot of fun to watch. I'm so glad that we went on Sunday and I hope that we'll have a chance to see a game next year before we go back home.

Oh, one more thing! After the game is done, they open up the field to the crowd and everyone brings their own AFL ball and kicks it around. It's really neat, but a bit of a hazard as you probably have a few thousand people on the field kicking and tossing footballs...I got hit in the head once by a rogue ball. Despite that, it was lots of fun to be on the field!