Away at the Footy

Apologies for not updating in quite some time... until this weekend, we'd had an uneventful couple of weeks. But get ready for a few posts!! On Saturday Rory and I went to the Magpies AFL Grand Final. AFL is code for Australian Rules Football, one of the more popular sports in Australia. Evidently Cricket is the most popular sport in Australia, a fact that I am both amazed by and unable to comprehend. If you're suffering insomnia and need a quick way to get some z's, without a doubt Cricket is the way to go. Otherwise, watching paint dry, tooth extractions and cleaning the toilet bowl are all immensely preferable pursuits. AFL, though, is much more exciting, even to me, the self-professed hater of all things hand-eye coordinated. I'm probably not sporty enough to explain it properly, but basically its a game played with 18 or so guys who try to get a ball between two goal posts by kicking, throwing, or otherwise advancing it. The game keeps moving and doesn't often stop for time outs, so in a lot of ways is a lot like soccer (I think. Soccer doesn't really do time outs, does it?), but its played with a football, so in some respects is like Rugby. You get 6 points for kicking the ball through the main goal posts, and then there are two side goal posts that you can kick the ball through for a point. If you're really interested you can look up the wiki page, but, in honesty, that's about where my understanding lies. The wiki page does claim the game is played with 'a ball in the shape of a prolate spheroid', so I'm not really sure how much additional understanding can be gleaned from it. Anyway, Rory has played for the Magpies Sports Club for a number of years, and this year the 1st -grade team made it to the Grand Final. The Sports Club separates their teams into 'grades'... the 1st grade is really quite good, with players getting paid and such, and then you have 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Anyway, we went to the Final Game this weekend, and they won by only 6 points!! It was really all very exciting, with an awards ceremony afterwards and all that jazz. It was a very football orientated weekend, actually. In addition to the Magpies game, Rory and Lincoln watched the St. Kilda (a professional team; Rory's favorite) Grand Final and they won as well. Good thing, cause their manly cheers and shouts made Alfie very nervous. Rory was also elected to be on the Magpie Club's Board of Directors... not sure what that entails, really, but there ya go. I shall keep you updated.