ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER

Author: Kath Hobson
Published on: Sep 4, 2000

G’day,

I made it back safe and sound from my trip to America, there were one or two little hiccoughs but we can discuss them in a later article.

This month we are going to talk about something of far more earth shattering importance than mere overseas travel. Are you ready for it? We are going to talk FOOTBALL. Not any old kind of football but the ONLY kind of football, Australian Rules Football or as it is affectionately referred to Aussie Rules or AFL .

Okay so I can hear you all yelling from here, "What is Aussie Rules, we have NEVER heard of it". Ah but then you are not an Aussie are you. Here in Australia football is no mere game or sporting event it is religion. Particularly in Victoria. Yes we play other codes of football here in Oz. We play Soccer, Rugby League and Rugby Union, there is even some Gaelic football played and a few clubs who devote themselves to American Gridiron but it is Aussie Rules that takes the country by storm and in every office around Victoria, in particular, the ONLY topic of conversation on Monday mornings is a blow by blow dissection of the weekend games. This is mainly a male preoccupation, although I know a number of women who could hold their own in these conversations, who know every player and how good he is. They can tell you as well as the next bloke, where their side was "let down" and who should have been out or who should have been playing on whom........I am NOT one of them. However during the winter unless you live like a hermit, football is pretty hard to get away from.

The Australian Football League (AFL was formerly known as the Victorian Football League (VFL) and was a mainly Victorian competition.It oficially started in 1877 as a competition called the Victorian Football Association (VFA) with the first game played betweencurrent AFL teams, Carlton and Melbourne. In 1987 The powers that be decided that if our great game was to continue to be great then it needed new blood and it was decided to take the league national. One or two Victorian teams migrated to other states, for example South Melbourne became the Sydney Swans and the Fitzroy Lions moved to Queensland to become the Brisbane Lions. Both these clubs were suffering financial woes and it was decided that in order for them to continue their future lay interstate. Then some new teams were added to the League, two in South Australia and another two in Western Australia. The League went from 12 teams to 16 and the fanaticism spread out from Victoria to encompass four other states. Some of the states already played their own state competition of Aussie Rules but for both New South Wales and Queensland this was a whole new ball game and for the first few years apart from expatriate Victorians it was hard to lure fans away from the two codes of Rugby that held sway in these two states.

As well as the national league there are a number of regional football leagues around Victoria, almost every town has its own team and certainly every high school. During the winter months you will see loads of little boys out in parks, playgrounds and backyards all over the state, emulating their footy heroes, going for marks, kicking goals and tackling the opposition. Our footy legends are held in high esteem and one of the greatest, Ted Whitten Snr.was given a State Funeral when he passed away in 1995, an honor usually reserved for high level politicians.

I once heard Aussie Rules described as the only game where you can be rewarded for being close enough. Footy is played with an oval leather ball on an egg shaped field known as a Football Oval. At each end of the ground there are two tall posts known as the goal posts and on the outside of them there are two shorter poles know as the point or behind posts. A goal is worth six points and is scored by kicking the ball between the two goal posts. A point is kicked between the point post and the goal post, or if the ball is touched on its way through the goal posts, or if it hits the posts. Each team has eighteen players on the ground at any one time and four players sitting on the interchange bench. In addition there is also a central umpire, two field umpires, two boundary umpires and two goal umpires, so it can get kinda crowded out there. During the season every team plays each other twice, once on their home ground and once away.

So now you have a little of the background of this wonderful game of ours, we can return to the title of this article. "One Day in September", just what does it mean.....well the one day in September is the AFL Grand Final. Usually the Grand Final is held towards the end of September, however this year the whole season was bought forward to make way for the Sydney 2000 Olympics which start on the 15th. This year the Grand Final was held this weekend, Saturday the 2nd September 2000. An auspicious event, the very first Grand Final for the new millennium.

This year the Grand final was between Essendon, the mighty Bombers and Melbourne, the Demons. Essendon went through the season with only one loss and Melbourne fought their way up from 14th place on the ladder to make it into their first Grand Final in ten years. As usual the Grad Final is preceded by much pomp and pageantry. It starts off with Friday’s Parade of Champions through the streets of Melbourne, where hundreds of fans turn out no matter what the weather to see their footy heroes drive through the streets. Then there is Collingwood’s traditional Grand Final Day breakfast on the Saturday of the final and then there is all the ceremony of the day itself before the game begins. This year was no exception there was live entertainment before the game provided by children and some of Australia’s best singers. The children danced and made wonderful patterns and then bought out huge banners in each of the team colors. There was the traditional rendition of Waltzing Matilda and the release of hundreds of helium filled balloons in the team colors and just before the "Big Game" and the singing of the Australian national Anthem. This year there war also a fly over by one of the RAAF Bombers in tribute to Essendon, who’s emblem is a bomber aircraft.

Then it was on to the serious business of the day four quarters of fast and furious football to determine who would be the champions of season 2000. I was, of course, going for the under dogs, Melbourne, because in true Aussie spirit I just can help supporting a battler, but unfortunately it was not to be Melbourne’s day. True to this seasons form the mighty Bombers made mince meat out of the poor Demons and annihilated the opposition........ah well there is always next year......besides it IS only a game!

Oh yes and the score :-

Essendon 19.21.135 defeated Melbourne 11.9.75

Kath :o)