Rediscovering Aussie Rules Football

Was flipping around the other day and discovered that Dish Network has added Setanta Sports to my package. Lots of world sports-ish type stuff ... good channel.

Among the offerings is Aussie Rules Football. Live matches, weekly highlights (like the old ESPN show), etc.

Forgot how simple and enjoyable it is to watch. Six points for a goal, one point for a behind, marks inside the 50 are a possible free kick. Other than bashing the hell out of each other, that's really all there is to know.

Watched the highlights last night and enjoyed them immensely. Looks like there might be several more teams than when I lasted watched.

Anyone else like this stuff? Seems to me it would translate to America well, but it never has.

 

Just the opposite in Boots Rules Football.

 

I could watch the refs in Aussie Rules Football signal touchdown all day long.

 

Used to love it when it was on ESPN way back in the WWL's pre-booyah days when it showed that sort of thing. Remember it had a cult following amongst the die hard sports I knew then-nearly all of whom stopped following after ESPN stopped showing it. It is a very cool sport.

 

Sorry, Bubbler. As Setanta expands its empire into the EPL you will see less Aussie Rules. The Ireland based channel is on the rise in terms of sports. As they grow they will move to the staples that make money (ie soccer). I do find it interesting that just about every sports station starts out with Aussie Rules. Do they just give their rights away?

 

Ah, the Grand Final at the MCG. The Super Bowl and World Series rolled into one.
"One day in September..."

 

I have never understood why this sport never caught on here (well, besides not being on, of course). Seems like if you spend five minutes watching it, you're hooked. I've never tried, but I'd imagine it has to be infinitely more entertaining the drunker you get. What's not to like?

 

Right there with you, Bubbler. Aussie Rules is what started me down the long spiral of insomnia ... as a sixth grader, I stayed up until midnight to watch the Essendon-Carlton Grand Final.

Fremantle and Port Adelaide weren't in the league back then, and apparently goal-kicking legend Gary Ablett's son is on the Geelong roster. Still great fun to watch, though.

Setanta also gets you plenty of Gaelic Games (Irish hurling and football) and rugby, by the way. You should be able to catch most of the Rugby World Cup.

 

I have been a fan of Aussie Rules for at least 10 years.

The coolest thing about it was usually the grand final would fall right around my birthday, and friends of mine would stay up all night drinking and watching the game into the wee hours.

Never really had a favorite team, just loved the game.

By the way, according to a promo I saw, Versus is going to have some of the Rugby World Cup as well.

 

My sister married a guy from Western Australia and has lived there since 1988. When he and some of his relatives came to the U.S. for the wedding, they wound up missing out on the Grand Final (I remember the Hawthorn Hawks, but I forget the other team).

It just so happened that ESPN showed the game a week or two before the wedding, which was in October, and one of my college roommates recorded it for me.

Fast-forward to the night before the wedding. After we got through with the rehearsal dinner, all the guys in the wedding party were segregated at one end of the house, where we just happened to have a VCR. My mother nearly killed me when I pulled out the VHS tape, and it took some doing to assure her it wasn't what she thought. All the Aussies agreed it was one of the best stag nights they'd every been a part of.

Several years later, my brother-in-law was voted president of his local football club, which is just a town team made up of sheep farmers. My sister said she thought it was a great honor until she realized it meant she was in charge of the canteen for home matches.

The club also fields a youth team. Last June, my then 6-year-old nephew scored his first career goal. I understand grandparents on both continents were inundated with photos of the achievement.

 

Most of the Aussie rules season is in our summer when EPL, and most other soccer domestic leagues, are on break. It'll have its place.

 

I posted this on the ESPN Cup Stacking thread and nobody paid attention. It probably deserves a better home here.

Give me some of those Essendon Bombers beating up on Hawthorn (I couldn't stand them or Carlton) and that Barney Rubble-look alike Leigh Matthews, the Sydney Swans (with those cool unis featuring the Opera House silhouette), the take-no-prisoners Aussie announcers on Channel 7 and those awesome goal judges in the white, Good Humor Man suits doing the stop-time, double-point to indicate a goal.

Speaking of Carlton and those hideous unis, anyone remember Bruce Dool? The bald guy with the Ted Kaczynski beard that looked like it could hide small children?

Give me some more of those 125,000 people crammed into the Melbourne Cricket Grounds for the Grand Final. And Trooper, loved the Gary Ablett vignette. Can't believe his son's playing now. I remember watching him in the early 80s, when I watched this all the time.