Grand Final shenanigans

This past Saturday was the Grand Final for Australian Football League (the game commonly known as "footy", which is distinct from rugby in a variety of ways that lose me completely). This is in a sense the equivalent of the Superbowl, only the teams wear significantly less padding and focus appears to be on the game rather than the half-time show. Adelaide was particularly geared up for the match since one of their teams was playing: the Port Adelaide Power (above left logo). These scrappy young Australians were playing against the Geelong Cats (Geelong being a town outside of Melbourne). In honor of this televised warfare, Travis and Andrew had a handful of folks over to the house for a ripping good cookout and communal game watching party. Word to the wise: kangaroo sausages cooked on a barbecue are not to be missed.

So how was the game? In a word: catastrophic. Adelaide suffered a withering defeat at the hands of the Cats, losing by a record-breaking 119 points (final score: 163 to 44). That, apparently, is pathetic. The Cats were entitled to a win after a 44 year stretch since they last won the premiership. However, Adelaide's miserable performance prompted a lot of collective hand-wringing and declarations that, in the words of one commentator, Adelaide was "disgraceful, dishonorable, disgusting, dismal." Harsh.

I didn't grasp much of what was happening on the field, although I did learn that footy players are allowed to pull a rather nifty move: a "screamer." When a player moves to intercept a pass to an opposing player, he can vault himself up onto the back of the opposed, lifting himself into the air where he can snatch the football before it lands into the arms of the poor sod under his knee. There was a spectacular example of this in the game Saturday by Paul Chapman of the Cats:

Good times. My Australian indoctrination continues, and maybe next time I watch a footy match a.) I can follow the action better and b.) it won't be such a "dishonorable" game. One can hope.