Ozzie Rules Football

We American students got the opportunity to go see a Sydney Swans game at the Olympic Stadium against the St. Kilda Saints and I thought it was pretty interesting. I’ve decided that to my American eyes, AFL (Australian Football League) looks like a combination of football, soccer, volleyball, basketball, and either wrestling or hockey. Now keep in mind, this is the perspective of a girl who is still working on figuring out all the little (silly) rules of American football so don’t read too much into this sports people!


It makes me think of American football because it is a form of football (obviously) and there are two sets of posts at the end of the field that remind me of field goals and if you get the ball (that looks like an oversized football) in the center set of poles its 6 points. If the ball goes through the outer posts or hits the pole its 1 point. It’s also like football because they do tend to jump on each other in a huddle on the ground… Very manly man “I am man hear me roar” football-ish. It reminds me of soccer because there is a lot more kicking in AFL games than there is in American football or “gridiron”. You don’t run with the ball you pass it or kick it so it remind me of soccer a bit in that way and also because you don’t score touchdowns, you get goals. It also reminds me of volleyball because the players do this weird sort of fist bump thing with the ball where it almost looks like they’re doing a volleyball serve. It’s like basketball because you don’t catch the ball and run. The players bounce the ball on the ground every couple paces as they go. It took me a while before I could keep all the rules of the game straight and I am beyond aware that I probably didn’t get half of them! The score board had three numbers, for example it would say 2-4-16 which would be 2 six pointers and 4 one pointers which would be a total of 16 points.

Finally, I say it reminded me of hockey because they would all be playing and all of a sudden they would be on the ground ripping each other’s shirts in a crazy pile and the referees never stopped it. It was amusing. The fans were pretty amusing too. There was a man in a skin tight red power ranger’s suit with a leotard skirt and a wig on and everyone had giant pom poms and flags. Whenever we walked by one group of fans they would yell “USA! USA! USA!” They apparently really liked Americans. No sporting event is ever complete without a trip to the concession stand of course so I was all jazzed and ready for a corndog or a chilidog forgetting that they probably serve different foods. Instead of good ole’ American hotdogs they served meat pies…sad day. So I settled for some delicious chips (aka French fries) and a diet coke so all was well.

It was also spiffy to be walking around the Olympic stadium and see the signs pointing out where the pools were and such. I’d like to go back sometime and walk around and see more. The place was absolutely massive. The field that the AFL game was on was beyond ginormous. The seats just kept going up and up and up. Luckily we had good seats so I didn’t have to get an unexpected cardio workout.

Unfortunately, the Swans lost to the Saints so it was a sad night in Sydney but I liked getting to see both an AFL game and the Olympic stadium in one go! According to the Australian students a rugby league game is the way to go, but AFL is uniquely Australian and it was a fun game to watch.