Butch aka Travis

You know, the best thing about a blog is that it is an outlet to bitch, and here I go.

I have decided to spend my Friday night (the 28th Oct) at home. My girlfriend came home from her last day of uni drunk-as-a-skunk and passed out at about 7pm. SO i have been alone with my thoughts since then.

I usually watch a movie, but i am a little movied out at the moment so i decided to just relax, order some take away and watch TV. This is where my problems began. There is nothing but shit on TV tonite, Channel 7 has “save the last dance” and Channel 10 has decided to premier “Ned Kelly” on a Friday night, but Channel 9 has got the ‘International Rules Football’ on. Still being new to Melbourne and having an interest in sport i decided to sit down and watch it.

I couldn’t figure it out, The Irish play Gaelic Football and the Aussies play AFL. I am obviously more familiar with AFL but i actually found what i was watching strange. The field is no longer an Oval its a proper oblong pitch, there is a soccer style goal in-between the central posts and the ball is round. At first inspection i found all of this very strange, it doesn’t look like a Hybrid it looks more like its just Gaelic Football.

SO i watch it, and it turns into a slug fest, the obviously bigger Australians start punching the hell out of the Irish, every dirty tactic in the book was thrown at the Irish by the Aussies, i started out as very neutral (me being a South African and a Rugby fan) but started hoping for the Irish to win.

Aussie Rules is very alien to me, i have only every watched/played Rugby Union. Rugby Union is a old sport with a lot of tradition. It is basically a Gentleman’s Game, the two teams clap each other off at the end, they walk out shake hands, there is allot of pageantry a perfect example is the New Zealand Haka. Once the kick off is done, the game is on for young and old, and a total of 30 men with an average weight of about 105kgs and 195cms plug on for 80 minutes, but it is the sportsmanship that sets rugby aside, there is a camaraderie on the field that can only ever be known by a fellow Rugby Player, i suppose you can say, it has a sole.

This is my problem with AFL, it is a sole less game with no sportsmanship whatsoever. AFL is just about the only game in the world where a man would punch another man while he is on the ground.
During the International Rules match the Aussies punched the Irish while they were on the ground, they employed countless cheap shots, sucker punched, punched in the back etc etc, everybody enjoys a little violence, its just our instinct (read the Lord of the Flies), but this just went on and on and on.

Then half way through the first half i learn that every single Irish player is an Amateur, i almost fell over. The AFL Australian team would consist of mainly Millionaire Prima Donnas, and here they are smothering and cheap shotting a completely Amateur bunch of Irishman. Then i remember the size difference, the Aussie team get paid to work out, the Irishman probably cant even afford Gym memberships.

At half time i was incensed. I was getting really pissed off with the tactics, i hate cheap shots and i hate bad sportsmanship, its so cheaply American. Then the bombshell dropped. One of the commentators was agreeing with me about the cheap shots etc, and then he reveals that THERE IS NO TACKLING IN GAELLIC FOOTBALL. I sat for a few minutes in disbelief. A vision came to me off a group of Irish lads playing a bit of Football in a nice lush typical Irish field, kicking the ball and having a laugh, not being paid for it and enjoying themselves, playing the sport for the love and not the money, all of a sudden a team comes along who play a completely different sport, although similar in appearance is still remarkably different and then being told that they now have to tackle. I can imagine when they sat in the room planning this International Rules debacle the Irish said

Irish : “Alright then, we keep the oblong pitch, the round ball and the goal, what element of AFL do you boys want to add”

Aussie: “Tackling”

Irish: “Tackling?”

Aussie: “Tackling”

Irish: “But sir, we don’t tackle in our game, we don’t know how?”

Aussie: “Well then, that’s your problem now i guess”

The physical aspect changes the whole dynamic of the game, all of a sudden you have to bulk up, change your body to be able to take hits, make hits and still be agile, just like AFL players do.

I hope i have made my point. But I really think the Aussies shouldn’t piss off the Irish, because they are just about the last nation on earth who will put up with their shenanigans and unsportsmanship, the South African Cricket Team doesn’t play Australia in Australia anymore because of the way they are treated, the English aren’t fans of doing anything with Australia, the Kiwis have no option and so forth. Once the Irish are gone then all Australia has to do is somehow piss off the Canadians, because they seem to like Australians, then they will have no one to like them anymore.