Apr 19 2007
This Warms My Heart
The gang at Deadspin posted this take on the Adam Selwood-Des Headland dust-up in last weekend’s Western Derby between the Eagles and the Dockers. A quick glance through the comments reveals that I’m not the only one who thinks Australian football is one of the most awesome codes on the planet. Here are a few samples:
Why ESPN shows 12 hours of poker a day and zero of this I’ll never understand.
Why the hell are we forced to watch ESPN coverage of Paintball? Why the hell doesn’t CBS launch a Sportsline Channel and start running stuff like this and Rugby?
So you’ll look back longingly on the early days of tWWL when they would show rugby and CFL games, and other actual sports. They’re giving you the gift of nostalgia for the time when they didn’t suck.
I did have the good fortune of attending an Aussie Rules game first thing after stepping off the plane in Melbourne, half-delirious from the flight. A full-crowd chant of “Carey is a wanker!” has to rank among my favorite crowd experiences.
I want to point out one thing…as much as rugby, soccer, etc. get ripped as boring (and incidentally, coming the other way from UK, Australia, etc. in regards American Football)- Aussie Rules is the one code of football that fans of other codes can agree is enjoyable to watch. Damn those Aussies for always knowing how to have fun…
Good on ya, Deadspinners. Let’s have someone find a pub that will stay open until 3:00 AM so we can all watch the Grand Final together.
One Response to “This Warms My Heart”
RSS Feed
***”I want to point out one thing…as much as rugby, soccer, etc. get ripped as boring (and incidentally, coming the other way from UK, Australia, etc. in regards American Football)- Aussie Rules is the one code of football that fans of other codes can agree is enjoyable to watch. Damn those Aussies for always knowing how to have fun…”***
The above comment is incorrect. Australian adherents of the two rugby codes bash Aussie Rules all the time. It’s a thing.
And it simply isn’t true that fans of other codes, outside Australia, all agree on finding Aussie Rules “enjoyable to watch”. It’s just that it is so hard to find Aussie Rules to watch over here (in the USA at least), that no one bothers to bash it. No one bothers to bash a sport that they never see and which no one they know ever talks about.
Not to be a party pooper, but I’m not a big fan of Aussie Rules either. It’s like basketball for me: I don’t care for sports that often feature triple digit scores; as a soccer fan I’m even suspicious of double digit scores.
Also as a soccer fan I’m used to lots of intricate midfield battles and strategies designed to create space, all of which you don’t get in Aussie rules with its lack of an offside rule and what appear to my eyes to be endless scuffles for the ball followed by endless long punts. It just doesn’t interest me.
I can see why it might fascinate the newbie to the sport, in the same way that bright lights and toys might fascinate a child, but I don’t care for the sport on that superficial level and I haven’t the time or the inclination to learn to appreciate the finer points of Aussie Rules which so far escape me.
I’m not denigrating anyone who likes Aussie Rules, merely pointing out that the love for this code is not universal, and that would be more apparent if Aussie Rules had a chance to go global in the same way that soccer or rugby has. But since it does not have that chance, only the people who like this code bother to talk about it much.