Talk Derby To Me

Due to lack of football on the second weekend of the academic year, the group of us had previously decided to purchase tickets to an Australian Rules Football game as fore-mentioned in this blog.  Zach had planned for the group of 25 or so of us to take the bus down to Subiaco Oval, where the game took place so we would arrive about a half hour early.  We had walked a kilometer or so down to catch this bus and as it pulled up, it let one person off, promptly closed it's doors and sped away, leaving the group of us very confused as to why it did not pick us up.  We then did what animals have done for years: adapted.  Since out tickets granted us free public transportation, we headed back down to the bus stop we normally take into the city and caught the bus to the train station.  The train down to the Oval was waiting for us as we walked up to the station, the first of many impeccable timings that occurred for my group throughout the day.

As we approached the stadium we had about five minutes before bounce down (the equivalent of a tip off in basketball except that the ref throws the ball as hard as he can at the ground, it bounces up, and the players tip it).  Right as we sat down into our seats in the first and second rows of the western corner of the oval the game began.  Within the first five minutes a fight broke out right to the left of our section, and it was at this point I knew I would like this game already.  The Fremantle Dockers, sporting their mainly purple uniforms (short shorts and a tanktop that had a white anchor with one green and one red shoulder) dominated from the very beginning.  The West Coast Eagles, Perth's team, wearing an almost all white uniform with a giant eagle's head in the middle, were completely outmatched.  The final score ended up at 160-85 Dockers.  We then proceed to walk right up to the train and subsequent bus with out waiting and got back to Tommy More in time for dinner.

 I will now try to describe the basics of this very entertaining game that seems to be a mixture of soccer, American football, and rugby.

Scoring:  Kicking the ball through the middle gap of the four posts gets you 6 points.  In the two outside gaps is one.

Movement: You can advance the ball by three methods.

1) Running with it. Every five or so meters you have to dribble it once.

2) Hand-balling it. This is the equivalent of a pass but you have to hit it out of one hand with your other, usually a fist.

3) Kicking it. You have to drop the ball and kick it, cannot kick it off the ground.  If a player catches the ball you kick, regardless of what team, they have two options.  They can either get a free kick or continue running.  A good way of scoring is kicking it close to your opponents goal and getting one of your players to catch it resulting in a free kick at the goals, such as this one.

Some fans had those very large pom-poms that were pretty interesting.  You are allowed to tackle the player with the ball, though not by the shoulders (to prevent injury) and no slide tackles. Thats about it for a good outline of the rules and structure of the game.  It is a very high scoring, high actin sport with a lot of bodies colliding, a couple of fights breaking out, and constant motion of the players.  Players' salaries range from 40k to 120k.  Oh yeah and the tickets we got were only $20.  Bear in mind this is a professional sporting event and it provided transportation to and back from the game for us.  If an Australian came over to the US and wanted to go to an American football game, they would be paying out a lot more than we did. Overall a very enjoyable spent at the Derby (what they call their rivalry games down here).