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Australian Rules Football (AFL) - How much do you know about it?

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Rugby's pretty popular as well, correct? And I forgot about the NBL, that's where Kyrie's dad played I believe (well, maybe it wasn't the NBL at the time). I enjoyed the Socceroos run in 2006, we were watching the Australia-Italy match on the flight from Melbourne to LA. Awful call to end the game, similar to the Netherlands-Mexico match this year. They didn't do too bad this year I suppose, but there was a lot of tough draws. I was surprised the United States pulled out of their group, but Portugal wasn't playing well and we got lucky with our style of play.

Isn't there an area in Melbourne where the Italians and Greek are right across from each other? If I recall correctly, I went to dinner there when their two teams played each other, it was a lot of fun. A lot of yelling and dancing in the street.

I don't know what it was about Oporto, but I really liked it. I kind of saw it as the Australia version of Chik-fil-A; I love me a good chicken sandwich. There aren't that many around though, it seems like a small chain. Probably why the quality of food is decent. What's Nandos?

I do yes: Browns, Cavaliers, Indians, Blue Jackets are the teams I follow. My parents are from Bedford, Ohio, which isn't too far from Cleveland. It's frustrating to not be able to watch without League Passes, but you can't beat life in Florida. I watch them play whenever they travel down to Florida, I'll be excited to see LeBron again down here in Miami. I'm buying NBA League Pass as well, though I might wait and see how many nationalized games we get. I know we'll be on ESPN/ABC a lot like before 2010, and we should have a Christmas game again.

How'd you become a Cleveland fan? I think it's interesting to learn how people overseas begin to root for a team/city... I'm an Aston Villa fan in the EPL. After the 2006, Randy Lerner bought them, around the same time I was figuring out a team to follow after the 2006 World Cup. It's too bad he sort of ran them into the ground.

Yep, but more in Sydney and Queensland. That's the one, Drederick played for the Bulleen Boomers who at the time competed in the SEABL (South East Australian Basketball League).

Haha! Oh the horror memories. 2006 was a great campaign but in terms of the quality of football on display when weighing up the situational factor of both teams (age, other teams in group, where our NT players are playing at the time), as crazy as it sounds, I was more impressed with them this time around!

Oh that would've been maybe the Greeks and the Macedonians? I remember a South Melbourne Hellas VS Preston Macedonia local league game where police and horses were required to control the hostility. Over the years, there's been a lot of rivalry between nations but to be honest, it's died down a lot as of late, now that the younger generations are filtering through and that stuff matters far less.

If you love chicken, Nandos is the way to go. It's Portuguese-style Peri-Peri flame grilled chicken. Check them out here: http://www.nandos.com.au/

That's great! I'm going to really try to catch more Indians and Browns games. League Pass has been a God-send for me down here. It's allowed me to watch the Cavs passionately for 4 years (as opposed to only being able to watch them on ESPN in the days of pre-illegal streaming).

As my (now former) profile picture would suggest, I've been a die-hard fan of the rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony since I was about 12 (I'm now 23). So from a young age, I was singing about Cleveland, wearing Bone Thugs/Cleveland related clothing and learning as much as I could about the city. I like to follow teams if I feel a particular connection to the city or team as opposed to the player (e.g. if I had never listened to Bone, I think I'd have been an Orlando fan as I'm a HUGE Walt Disney enthusiast). So it was pretty much the influence of Bone Thugs that got me into Cleveland sports and has made me so passionate about the city itself to the point where I legitimately feel like a citizen of Cleveland without having ever stepped foot there!

Great to hear you're a Villa fan - they're a good team historically to follow! A lot of tradition there. I'm a Barça (before Barça became cool to follow) fan. Have been since about the age of 12 as well when we played indoor soccer/football and were given free Barcelona jerseys. Me being a kid, absolutely loved the colors and was told who they were - so I've been there ever since. Since then, I've developed a passion for Catalonia and learning the language and the Independent movement for Catalan independence from the Spanish, the city of Barcelona, the history of the club and an anti-movement against the disgrace that is our current board of directors. I've been a Barça fan longer than I have been a Cavs fan actually, but again, that's attributed to the fact that we've had La Liga televised in Australia for years now. Have had ample opportunity to actually follow them legitimately.
 
I've seen it many times -- Australia is where men are men and the sheilas are sheilas.

I had my wife watch it once -- she's a typical Philadelphia Eagles fan (i.e. brutal). After watching for 1/2 hour she remarked that we in the USA are a bunch of pussies.
 
I get the same feeling watching this as I did the video from EAYOR of the Japanese game where one team tries to hold up a pole with someone clinging to the top while the other pummels the shit ouf of them until it drops. I am just completely lost. Looks cool, but just cannot figure out what is going on. I also then realize that this must be what non-football, baseball, basketball, hockey, etc. folks think when they watch my favorite games. Like WTF are they doing that, WTF is the point of this, why are they wearing those silly outfits, and on and on. Good for putting the shoe on the other foot, so to speak...

Oh, and a quick question- have any players died playing this? Because my understanding is everything in Australia can kill you, I just assume your homegrown games can too. Please confirm.
 
From yesterday's SMH:

The late, great Robin Williams, doing an impromptu stand-up routine at Sydney's Sugarmill Hotel in 2010:
"And Australian Rules...where did that come from? Is it that we live so f---ing far from anywhere, we can just make shit up?
 
I get the same feeling watching this as I did the video from EAYOR of the Japanese game where one team tries to hold up a pole with someone clinging to the top while the other pummels the shit ouf of them until it drops. I am just completely lost. Looks cool, but just cannot figure out what is going on. I also then realize that this must be what non-football, baseball, basketball, hockey, etc. folks think when they watch my favorite games. Like WTF are they doing that, WTF is the point of this, why are they wearing those silly outfits, and on and on. Good for putting the shoe on the other foot, so to speak...

Oh, and a quick question- have any players died playing this? Because my understanding is everything in Australia can kill you, I just assume your homegrown games can too. Please confirm.

I still think the whole "Australia is dangerous" routine is a bit of an exaggerated misconception. Probably because I don't live an a typical "down under" city, though. Don't even remember the last time I saw a koala or a kangaroo - maybe at the zoo? And deadly spiders and snakes? I'm more petrified to visit E.99th. Don't really get many of those either to be honest lol.

It's a little different for us, though. Most Australian sports fans have a pretty solid grip of baseball, hockey American football etc. (albeit a lot of that probably comes from exposure to video games and ESPN) while it's obviously more difficult for an American to be exposed to AFL footy.

No deaths in AFL. We did have a replica of the Paul George injury a few years back, but that's as bad as it gets. Like any sports, you can certainly find career-ending injuries. But it's certainly not nearly as dangerous as people might assume.

In terms of roughness, I'd say it's similar to hockey meets American football - except that we don't necessarily need the protective gear ;)
 
Good thread simmy, love the pies too as you know. I wonder how many people in Cleveland actually follow it and know its completely different to rugby. Best sport in the world imo! Basketball and Soccer after it.
 
Rugby's pretty popular as well, correct? And I forgot about the NBL, that's where Kyrie's dad played I believe (well, maybe it wasn't the NBL at the time). I enjoyed the Socceroos run in 2006, we were watching the Australia-Italy match on the flight from Melbourne to LA. Awful call to end the game, similar to the Netherlands-Mexico match this year. They didn't do too bad this year I suppose, but there was a lot of tough draws. I was surprised the United States pulled out of their group, but Portugal wasn't playing well and we got lucky with our style of play.

Isn't there an area in Melbourne where the Italians and Greek are right across from each other? If I recall correctly, I went to dinner there when their two teams played each other, it was a lot of fun. A lot of yelling and dancing in the street.

I don't know what it was about Oporto, but I really liked it. I kind of saw it as the Australia version of Chik-fil-A; I love me a good chicken sandwich. There aren't that many around though, it seems like a small chain. Probably why the quality of food is decent. What's Nandos?

I do yes: Browns, Cavaliers, Indians, Blue Jackets are the teams I follow. My parents are from Bedford, Ohio, which isn't too far from Cleveland. It's frustrating to not be able to watch without League Passes, but you can't beat life in Florida. I watch them play whenever they travel down to Florida, I'll be excited to see LeBron again down here in Miami. I'm buying NBA League Pass as well, though I might wait and see how many nationalized games we get. I know we'll be on ESPN/ABC a lot like before 2010, and we should have a Christmas game again.

How'd you become a Cleveland fan? I think it's interesting to learn how people overseas begin to root for a team/city... I'm an Aston Villa fan in the EPL. After the 2006, Randy Lerner bought them, around the same time I was figuring out a team to follow after the 2006 World Cup. It's too bad he sort of ran them into the ground.
Rugby is popular in Queensland and NSW (Sydney) + New Zealand, everywhere else AFL is more popular (Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Tasmania).

The professional rugby league comp, the NRL, has one team in Melbourne, one team in New Zealand and the rest are in either Queensland and New South Wales so half the country doesn't even have a local NRL team.

Whereas the AFL is much more spread, has 2 (struggling) teams in Queensland, 2 teams in NSW, two teams in Perth, two teams in Adelaide and like 8 teams in Melbourne and one team in Geelong which is like an hour drive from Melbourne. The Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide teams are all very well supported so anyone that tells you rugby is more popular is just lying and most likely from Brisbane or Sydney

I suspect America may be similar with some cities preferring NBA to NFL etc... although I am not entirely certain on that.

The NBL has really picked up recently, obviously LaMelo ball and a few other college players are opting to come here which helps, back in the 90's it was big then died off a bit when the NBA popularity increased a heap but the NBL is really picking up again.
Players like Aaron Brooks, LaMelo Ball, Terry Armstrong, Casper Ware, Shawn Long, Melo Trimble, Bryce Cotton, RJ Hampton, Terrence Ferguson, Casey Prather, Andrew Bogut are in or have recently been in the NBL... which may not seem like much but is actually a large improvement of near NBA standard players playing in the league.


Nandos is much better than Oporto's.. I'm surprised America doesn't have Nandos... England does I think.
 
You should all be Collingwood Magpie fans btw for two reasons:
1. That's Delly's team that he supports
2. An American actually plays for them


here is a highlights vid of a game where the American dominates what is essentially a semi final to get into the grand final (we call it prelim) last year... so 90k+ people were at the game.. I was there.. incredible atmosphere
 
I actually watched Aussie Rules without realizing it as a kid. It was on Sportschannel, which if you were local to Ohio in the early 90s was like ESPN, but couldn't afford rights to any US sports beyond the Cavaliers (for a couple years anyway), so they'd just play whatever sports were cheap to acquire American rights for. Hence Aussie Rules... and Irish Hurling... and some other weird Irish sport where they'd bowl a ball down a long road. I think it was actually called "Irish Bowling". The Irish are very creative with their sports names. So anyway, I watched Aussie Rules, had no idea what was going on, but it was better than H2O Zone, which was a stupid show that would follow the Aussie Rules programming on occasion.
 
This sport is like cricket to me. Absolutely makes no sense. Will watch.
 
I'm actually surprised that Australian rules football hasn't been picked up by some sports network in the US. The time change might make it hard to gain an audience. Networks want live sports. Delayed sports only seems to work for the Olympics.

I think Cricket and Australia rules football will be the next sports to be picked up by a network if they can figure out deal where it is shown at a proper time in the home market and the US.
 
This sport is like cricket to me. Absolutely makes no sense. Will watch.
NFL took me ages to understand.. for a while I still thought the QB and other field players kicked the ball to each other at some point...
Baseball still makes no sense to me :p
 
I'm actually surprised that Australian rules football hasn't been picked up by some sports network in the US. The time change might make it hard to gain an audience. Networks want live sports. Delayed sports only seems to work for the Olympics.

I think Cricket and Australia rules football will be the next sports to be picked up by a network if they can figure out deal where it is shown at a proper time in the home market and the US.

Cricket is already on Willow. Jofra Archer was well worth watching today.
 

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