Swan Dive

Went to my first AFL game on Sunday there, and saw the mighty Sydney Swans take a commanding lead in the first quarter against the Western Bulldogs (from Melbourne, as most of the Aussie rules teams are), only to fall apart and get hammered for the remaining three.
I'd been wanting to go for a while, as loads of people go on about it, but watching it on TV I thought it looked absolute pelt. But that's exactly what everyone tells you - it don't work on the telly, you've got to be able to see the whole pitch and get involved live to capture the full flavour. They were right, it is much better than say, watching rugby league live, where the little hand-offs and shimmies are easier to view on telly than they are from the thirtieth row of an 80,000 seater stadium (I went to see the opening game of the NRL at Homebush Olympic Stadium/The ANZ with Ste. It was the Rabbitohs Vs Roosters and wasn't much cop live). The Swans play most of there matches at the SCG, there was 29,000 there, and it's a bit like watching a weird mix of table football and ping pong played by 16-to-a-team giant nutters. Each quarter is half an hour long and with half time and breaks games last about two and a half to three hours. There's an Irish lad who plays for the Swans who used to be a Gaelic Football pro, and next year they're doing a cross code game, with the Swans playing Dublin at Aussie Rules in Dublin, then coming back to Sydney and playing them at Gaelic Football. Weird, but there's so many micks here it's not surprising. Go down Coogee at the weekend and all you see is pissed up, lobster-pink micks generating huge volts of static electricty in those nylon gaelic football tops. In a recent report the Coogee Bay Hotel was the second most violent pub in New South Wales (after a Hells Angels pub in in the middle of nowhere).

Read the match report here. I went with Luke, who's a Leicester fan. Quite fitting then that the Swans took a beasting and stood proud next to the Gills and the Foxes in failure.