AFL

AAMI Stadium: Home of the Port Adelaide Power... and the Adelaide Crows

On Saturday afternoon Andy and I got out of the house with our roommate Ben and went to our very first AFL game. Ben, who is from Adelaide, is an avid Port Adelaide Power fan and has season tickets to all the Port Power games... so he was obviously our guide. And boy did we need a guide. Let me explain...
AFL = Australian Football League. But 'football' in this instance is not soccer or American football, it is Aussie Rules Footy and it makes little sense to the naked eye. Seeing it without knowing anything about it looks like a bunch of fit men in little shorts and tight shirts fighting over an oval ball on a big oval field (150m long by 135m wide) with 4 big, tall, white posts at either end. At some points it really looks like they're trying to grab a greasy watermelon. And as the game progresses and continues to not make any clear sense (like the way the ref bounces the ball on the ground and into the air at center after a 6 point goal is scored (there is a 1 point goal too) and also how the ref throws the ball in backwards after it's gone out, no matter what team made it go out) you start thinking of the games you played as a child. The games you played in the summer that had the rules made up as you went along... and the rule maker was that bossy kid who always made a new rule to help his situation. That's what watching AFL feels like- oddly nostalgic.