Syd-ney, Syd-ney!
Out to see the Swans play the Hawthorne Hawks on Saturday at the Sydney Cricket Ground, a fine old stadium, smaller than the Telstradome (formerly the Olympic Stadium). AFL is a thrill-a-minute came, borrowing from rugby and soccer and (God help us) basketball, by all appearances. After having seen a bit on television, I’d come to the conclusion that it is a game of no little precision, not to mention a lot of tearing around the field, but that really depends on a number of other factors. The Hawks kept Sydney’s possessions huddled into the center of the field for the most part, while managing to take the ball outside and in the air themselves, allowing them to score nearly at will. Sydney’s passing looked good, but wasn’t getting them very far, although they did manage to bring the game to within three goals in the second half. Still, for all that you can say it was a tight score, the Hawks outplayed the Swans, and playoff hopes now rest on next weekend’s game against Collingwood.

Enough sportswriting. I left the house a half an hour or so after dark and walked up to Moore Park, where the SCG is located, eventually joining a fair throng wending its way through Surry Hills. Saturday had been a little chilly, sunny overall, but with nightfall had cooled off still more, so I was a little surprised to see fruit bats swooping through the fig trees and over the ornamental ponds, hunting bugs. (When I was younger and went every year into the Adirondack mountains, we’d see bats, but little ones, and their flight was quite distinct from the swallows which would also be out hunting over the lakes; fruit bats, too, have a distinctive flying style: they look like those rubber bats you’d see in vampire movies, a heavy, leathery but languorous flapping.) I picked up a copy of the Record and paged through to glean what information I could prior to meeting my friend, Andy, who’d secured a place for me in the member’s stands from a friend of his, part of a group of nearly a dozen who go to the games quite regularly. (And yes, we had a mobile-moment: engrossed as I was in the Record, I wasn’t really watching for Andy, and he didn’t recognize me, either, rugged up as I was. We’d each brought our phones to triangulate our meeting, but when he placed the call, he was standing right behind me. Hilarity ensued.) I was very impressed with the crowd overall, the majority wearing their team’s colours, mostly knit hats and scarves, but also tall, stovepipe hats, striped like the cat-in-the-hat’s, lending a certain air to the proceedings they may not have intended. (I also learned that it’s the swans in western Australia, near Perth, that are black; otherwise, Australian swans are white, just like their northern hemisphere cousins, which fact I seemed to have gotten mixed up on. That explains a lot, but not, however, why Sydney teams seem to prefer less-than-fearsome beasts as mascots.) Ross and Andy and the others were very helpful, straightening me out on some of the finer points as well as correcting the assumptions I’d made.

In the event, Aussie Rules strikes me as the game of choice. Rugby’s all well and good, but it’s a game of brawn and grit, while AFL seems to employ more – and varied – skills, keeping the proceedings lively, even thrilling. I suppose I can still claim the Rabbitohs as my League team, but it may only be by rights of my status as a foreigner that I get away with it. Most people I’ve spoken to disparage (good naturedly, although I suppose there are those less even-minded) one sport over the other (and let’s not even address the difference between Rugby League vs. Rugby Union). There isn’t really a correlative sports divide in the States, though, so we’ll just mark up my inability to fully choose between them to culture.