You need footy.
Amy and I began our education on the beloved Australian sport one evening on the tele. To the untrained eye, footy is a chaotic mess that appears to be an amalgam of soccer, rugby, American football, and mud-wrestling. Eleven muddy men with calves the size of a fifth grade child’s torso desperately chuck, kick, and wrestle a leather oval towards the opposing goal while another eleven men attempt to smother the first eleven men with their armpits. The umpires run alongside blowing their whistles with the desperation of cocaine addicted rats pressing a bar. The whistles appear random and play almost never stops after a whistle is blown.
The umpires, we were told, have some issues. Specifically, they have a pathological need for attention, an inflated sense of self-importance, and a dictatorial sense of justice. In another country, they would either end up as cult leaders, American Idol contestants, or presidential candidates. I felt a deep and abiding sense of pity for them until learning that they can make up to $200,000 a year. That’s right, $200k to wear very tight white shorts (think 70s after school special), to blow your whistle whenever the hell you feel like it, and to be bitterly despised by every Aussie in a 20 mile radius with a blood alcohol level of .20 and a few hours to kill. It’s a life.
Footy on the tele is nothing compared to the real thing, especially Adelaide footy. Amy and I became immediate converts to the mighty Sturt Double Blues, one of the local teams.
Two hours in an intermittent downpour (occasional hail) in our equivalent of March watching twenty two small figures in tank tops slamming each other repeatedly into the mud – that’s Australia.
An unexpected bonus is the intermission between quarters. That’s when both teams huddle on the middle of the field for a motivational talk and whoever feels like it can come onto the field to listen to the coaches scream at the players.
This is also the moment when you can really demonstrate your knowledge of the game. Standing only ten feet away from the huddle, you have the opportunity to tell number 7
that his play is really “piss poor” – the ten feet giving you enough of a head start that you have a reasonable chance of making it to the safety of the stands. I’m not saying that’s what I did. I’m just saying I thought about it.
The fans are remarkable as well. One of them, a man in his fifties dressed in a black raincoat, apparently has four players on Sturt with restraining orders against him for what I’ll call unwelcome invitations. Repeated unwelcome invitations.
Unfortunately, the Double Blues lost by 40 points. If that sounds bad it’s because it is.
