Go the Eagles!

A couple of weekends ago I went to my first AFL match at the Subi Oval! The West Coast Eagles v Port Adelaide. Having never seen a match before, neither live nor on tv, I had an evening to get up to speed with the game. R ran me through the aim of the game - kick the ball through the goal posts. Okay. Easy. The match was great fun and I find it really exciting learning about the sport and the rules. (Oh, and we had pie at half time!)

Caveat. The following is written by me based on what i remember. It may or may not be quite accurate, but I'm sure it will sound very basic, and I'm sure there's probably a lot more to the game than i'm describing. Here goes!

At each end there's 4 posts, 2 tall ones and 2 shorter ones on each side. If you get the ball in the middle bit (the goal) you get a goal (6 points). If you get it in between the posts on either of the 2 sides, you get a behind (1 point). The ball is kicked into the goal. You can run with the ball but if you do you have to bounce it every 10 metres or so. You don't throw the ball over arm, you tap it to your team mates. If you catch the ball without dropping it, you can't be tackled.

Each team has 18 players on the pitch, and you can interchange players without subbing (meaning you can go off but still come back on). Whilst the game's in play, there might be men in fluorescent yellow running about, these are like messengers. They come on to pass messages from the manager/coach! (spot the one in the in middle in the second photo!)  There are a lot of officials wearing red - 9 in total. So, all in all, there are a lot of people on the pitch!

The match is played in 4 parts of 20 mins each. This is 20 mins of actual play time so usually a quarter takes longer, say about 28/30 mins. The bit i liked best is when the ball goes out of play, an official stands on the boundary line facing away from the pitch and throws the ball in backwards over his head! Funny. Oh, and the ball's like a rugby ball.

The games are a real family affair, all ages go from young kids to old grannies. There wasn't a great deal of shouting or chanting, until towards the end when people got a wee bit more excited. Although, we were playing Port Adelaide who are quite low down the table. Now, if it had been a derby (West Coast Eagles v Fremantle Dockers), it might have been a different story. Oh, and derby is not pronounced 'darby', it is pronounced 'derby'.


p.s. not quite sure about the date on these photos!  These were taken on R's little old camera.