Every country has a sport that its residents adore. For most of Europe and Brazil, it's Soccer. In the US it depends on the season, but I think most would consider Baseball to be 'America's favorite past time' (at least that's how it's billed). In Australia, Aussie Rules Football (AKA Footy) is more important than life itself. And now I know why. It's awesome.
I went to my first footy game about 2 weeks ago. A friend got a free ticket so I went to cheer on the Fremantle Dockers. I had seen it on TV and understood a little bit of it. One of my flatmates is a Footy fan and filled me in on some of the rules and game play. Although she's a West Coast Eagles fan so I think I'm supposed to hate her. The game was so fun, so much better than any sport in the US, except Ultimate Frisbee, of course. It's so fast paced and intense that anything can happen in the game, and it usually does. It's basically the love child of American Football and Rugby. The guys who play are super intense. No protection during the game, except maybe a mouth guard (but only if you're a wuss). The goal is to get the ball through the goal to score six points. You can only kick the ball or punch it to your teammates, no throwing. Oh, and you can totally wail on anyone, at anytime. Just no pushing or face shots. Other than that, it's all fair game. Sometimes fights just break out on the other side of the field, nowhere near the ball.
Freo won the game by a lot but didn't make it to the playoffs :( They're going on right now in Melbourne I believe. There's 16 professional teams throughout Australia, with 2 in Perth. I guess each city has about 2 teams and Melbourne is like the Footy capital of Australia with like 9 of the 16 teams being from Melbourne. Watching the news is hilarious because it'll be like 10 minutes of actual news and then 20 minutes of Footy recaps and various news segments about the players. So funny. I guess Australians have their priorities straight.
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