Footy: Crows Vs. Richmond - June 30, 2012

To celebrate Canada Day weekend here in Australia, we did one of the most Australian things we could do: go see a footy game.  We went with Ryan's old boss Andy and his daughter Gabby, and we had an awesome time.  In all the time Ryan and I have been together we have never seen a professional sporting event together, so it was another new experience for us.

Footy is primarily an Australian sport, though it does have international teams.  It is not the same as American football, or soccer, or rugby, but has some aspects of all three.  I won't bore you with the rules, but they were pretty simple and we had the hang of it after the first 20 minutes or so.  The weirdest part, though, was how small all of the players were!  They don't wear padding, so it was really weird to watch compared to hockey or American football.

This guy has the most beautiful hair I've ever seen.  I think his name is Sloan.  This was during warm-up, so that's why the stands aren't full.

The stadium was only a few kilometres from our house, so the traffic was quite bad in our area.  We took the bus, but it probably would have been faster to walk.  As we approached the stadium, like in Toronto, there were people everywhere dressed in team colours, some people were having barbeques, and lots were kicking around footballs. 

Once we got comfortable with the rules, my Wasylyk personality eventually emerged into a loud, cheering fan.  Andy and Gabby were amused by my enthusiasm, but Ryan wasn't surprised at all.  We had an extremely rowdy, drunk guy next to us cheering for the other team, so naturally I had to use some of my famous smack-talk on him.  After he yelled "That's a disgrace!", I screamed back "You're mom's a disgrace!" and later, "Take that, ya hoser!"  Even after that, the old lady behind us still thought we were American…  I felt a little bad, but it was all in good fun.

The first quarter was bad because the Adelaide Crows were losing pretty bad, but we made a massive comeback and won respectably.  Overall it was a pretty exciting game of footy, and I'm so glad we went.

After the game we were allowed on the field for awhile, and out of nowhere appeared hundreds of footballs.  While posing for a picture, Ryan somehow managed to trip me and I ended up sprawling on the ground.  No pictures of that though, since the camera wasn't on (thank goodness).

We ended up walking home, and I'm pretty sure we beat most of the traffic.  Really, though, we needed some way to wear off the beer and chiko rolls!

(I swear posts about Tasmania are coming soon, but they're much harder to write since there are so many pictures to go through!  Be patient.)