Swans on the Grass, Alas
For all the time I spent out by the Olympic Park when I first started working, I didn’t make much effort to walk around and see it. For the most part, the grounds are dominated by the (now) Telstra Stadium, a gigantic venue holding about 80,000. So Saturday night was a bit of a tourist venture as well as an opportunity to attend the Swans bid to go to the Grand Finals of Aussie Rules football. Only 71,000 were in attendance, but even at that it was quite a crowd, with quite a lot of red-and-white on display. (I have to give the Park designers some credit, as well as to the overall Aussie character, in that everyone proceeded in and out along the roadways and parking garages smoothly and efficiently.) The field of play is significantly larger than the Swans home field at the Sydney Cricket Grounds, but unlike American “gridiron,” the goal posts are set at the ends of the oval regardless of its size. This may have been a factor in the humiliating loss the Swans suffered at the hands of the Brisbane Lions. Sure, I enjoyed the game, and I don’t have the dilemma of being asked if I’d like to buy a ticket for the Grand Final (which would have been expensive as well as hard to resist), but it was too bad they didn’t win. The Lions, with the assistance of what appeared to be some pretty dodgy calls in the first quarter, handled the ball very well indeed, especially in the air, while Sydney never managed their air game well at all, except perhaps in the third quarter, where they overcame a significant deficit, only to lose it all again and more in the 4th. Their ground game, where AFL is at its least effective from what I can see, was spent mostly on the bottom of a tackle. I figure the week off they had put Sydney at an over-rested disadvantage, which combined with Brisbane’s squad of veteran players probably meant the outcome was never as much in doubt as I’d gone in thinking.