Rev is off tonight. I’m sure it’s completely unrelated to last night’s tilt featuring his wooly mammals and their LOLjob. That was worth any monkey paw tomfoolery, though. As you may have heard, A-A-Ron’s achilles is indeed torn, meaning he is out for the whole season.

I’ll try and limit my schadenfreude, but no promises.

How was your NFL opening weekend? Fluent in Hippo yet? Any immediate blowback to DFO Team Previews? Ready to give up for the season already? Why not look to….other football?

If you missed part one of BFC goes to Australia and does nothing but walk, drink, and go to sporting events, boot scoot on over to that first installment.  For now, how about a little Tuesday gaze at some boots….on the ground!?

When we last left off, I’d recapped the GWS vs Sydney AFL match (my first in person Aussie rules footy game) and the Dutch beating South Africa in my first ever in person World Cup match. As teased, I hit up the terrible FIFA ticketing app and after LOTS of failures (very few of them driven by operator error), I finally snagged a ticket to the Aussie national team game against Denmark. Somehow it was also only around $30, which is nuts.  But before we get to the value of the view, I have to note that I started my gameday with a trip to a wildlife preserve and a cocktail bar.

I won’t spend too much time on this, but basically you show up to this place filled with koalas and kangaroos and crazy birds and shit, and you can feed some of them and take a little posed picture with others. It’s a tourist trap and yet still awesome. And a good way to kill time before shlepping back on the train to a football match. But first, let’s stop off for a cocktail in Paramatta.

Oh, that’s the train part, let’s check out the cocktail bar.

That was not the only cocktail, but I borrowed their power outlet for a while, forcing me to engage with the rest of bar staff. Which is one of my favorite things to do in the world, tbh.  High compliment when the manager asked if I was a bartender based on my bar talk.

Unlike the first WWC match I attended, this one wasn’t in Sydney proper at the Sydney Football Stadium aka Allianz Stadium but rather at Stadium Australia aka Accor Stadium. NGL, it all confused the FUCK out of me since FIFA would only call them Sydney Football Stadium and Stadium Australia, and Google/GoogleMaps would only call them the A names. I ended up quadruple checking by street addresses because they are NOT close.  As with the Giants game, I needed to go to Olympic Park for Stadium Australia but in an entirely different part of the park. In fact, the train station wasn’t even open the night I went to the Giants game, which is confusing as all fuck because it was fine and dandy for FIFA, so why did I wait in a massive line to take a shuttle bus earlier in the week.  That bellyaching aside, here’s the general lay of the land approaching the stadium from the train station:

Don’t mind the butterfly/fairy wings. Also, who named this place and why don’t they sponsor DFO?

Passing the restaurants and getting closer to the stadium entrance, i start to notice a TON of people wearing the same yellow blanket/poncho thing.

Turns out Adidas was giving these capes away, but the line was SO long that I decided it wasn’t worth the 20-40 minutes of my life I’d never get back. Once I went into the stadium and realized a) EVERYONE had one and b) there was still an hour until the game started, I had some regrets. But hey, fire!

And balls!

And once in the stadium, look at that view!

And from the side?

Sydney Football Stadium, where I saw the NED-RSA game, has a capacity of just under 40,000.  Stadium Australia (pictured above, pay attention) has a capacity more than double that.  For those of you scoring at home, that’s a lot more, and combined with the fact that this was a home crowd of very happy and supportive Aussies, it was VERY loud.

HOWEVA, there was one thing that was the wurst:

But at least they had weird chips crisps to make Litre horny wistful.

Ok, onto the football. And the awesome crowd including this little girl’s inflatable boxing kangaroo.

This was a great spot in the stadium to see everything and feel the vibe in the crowd.

Caitlin Foord was really incredible in this one, and while the Danes had some solid talent, the Matildas were better, controlling the ball and playing excellent defense. As the second half continued to tick up, there was a really special moment. I don’t need to tell you all how awesome Sam Kerr was, but despite her not starting the match, when she entered as a sub, the place went from buzzing to fully electric.

Seriously, the crowd went fucking nuts, and even though it was after their second goal, it was part of what made the country get fully bought into the Matildas’ push down the stretch. I can’t stress enough how special it was to see EVERYONE go from “yeah, we’re hosting the Women’s World Cup, it’s ok I guess,” to “WOOOOOOO DID YOU SEE THE MATCH LAST NIGHT? WE SHOULD BE INVESTING IN WOMEN’S SPORT AND WE ARE GOING TO CRUSH THE HOPES AND DREAMS OF THE FRENCH WOOOOO!” It was impossible to get caught up in the excitement.

One weird thing that happened during the game is that they played, and the whole stadium sang along with, Sweet Caroline. Not being in Boston or, you know, America, I found that odd.  A very drunk local politician explained to me later that evening that it’s an homage to the US Ambassador to Australia, Caroline Kennedy, a picture of whom apparently inspired Neil Diamond to write the song.  I think it’s creepy, but what do I know?

Full highlights from the game here:

Following that majestic win, tens of thousands of people needed to get on the train to get the hell out of dodge.  The good news is that everyone was in really good sprits, lots of jokes and chants and general joie de vivre. The bad news is that it was a crush of humanity, and there was “signal trouble” that delayed trains for 20 minutes starting when I was one train away.

How do you top a massively watched thrilling home host win?  By flying to Melbourne to watch more Aussie Rules footy…

Given that we’re already well into the AFL finals (read: playoffs) and these games were all weeks ago, I’ll try and be quicker. First, though, I have to take you back to that ferry ride to Olympic Stadium for the GWS-Sydney game that I mentioned in my earlier BOTG post.  Well, I came to find out that both of those dudes who let me share their uber worked for the AFL, one in Melbourne and one whose whole job was AFL outreach OUTSIDE of Victoria. Fascinatingly, I learned on this trip that nobody outside of Victoria or Perth gives a shit about aussie rules footy.  Explains why it used to be called the Victoria Football League, I suppose.  More relevant here is they were intrigued by my GWS fandom, asked about my other plans for my holiday, and when I told them I planned to go to the MCG to see Collingwood take on Geelong, they let me know that the game was completely sold out.  But that they’d take care of it.  So long story short short story long, two emails later, I had tickets for both the Friday night Pies vs Cats sold out game but also for Saturday’s Demons vs Blues game, which wasn’t quite sold out but close. Oh, and the seats they gave me were REALLY fucking good, in the AFL Members’ reserve section, and completely gratis. So suck it, Officer Friendly, it DOES pay to talk to strangers*!

^{*Note: Offer not valid where privilege and locality don’t permit. And don’t engage trolls or crackheads. DFO is not liable for the repercussions of you talking to any strangers.}

So after a very delayed EasyJet flight and some lovely walking around and exploring, including multiple cocktail bars, I went to the Melbourne Cricket Ground for a tour and to visit the Australian Sports Museum in the morning and returned that evening for the Friday Night Footy clash.  I won’t get into too many details of the tour/sports museum except to say a) I know it’s called the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) and in fact is “managed” by the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) (though technically owned by the Victorian government) but as the tour guides reminded us, aussie rules pays the bills and b) share a few choice pictures including the exterior, on field (yeah, I got to walk onto the field), locker rooms and Fatso the Fat Arsed Wombat.

Lockers/locker rooms were smaller than I expected, and all the tour guides had jackets that intense. I hope those pictures convey the appropriate scale of the place, because it is fucking immense.  I can’t decide if it felt more cavernous empty or once filled with 80,000 fans…

On to the match! (If you want more details/pics of the fancy shmancy parts of the stadium, e.g. the library, private dining areas, more of the museum, etc, just lmk)

Stadium had a very different vibe at night. Lots of buzz since Collingwood had been the top team in the comp, but after losing their star player to injury, they’d been on a two game slide.  Geelong had won the whole fucking thing in 2022, but a loss in this game would essentially eliminate them from Finals competition.  Hence the 80,000 people that showed up to watch.

Not bad seats for the price of zero dollars (Australian).  Oh, and at Litre’s urging, I picked up a four and twenty pie.

It was decidedly fine. Beer selection was much better than at the GWS game, though that may have been because I was in the AFL Members’ Lounge bar.

Let’s bring the concept of “Members’ Bars” to the US, shall we? Downstairs was pretty much just Great Northern, but with some exceptions.

Geelong is about an hour away from the MCG and part of greater Melbourne, but I guess they felt the need for a simple introduction with their banner.

Collingwood, on the other hand, went for a team fat advertisement, I guess.

Both sides’ fans were VERY into the game, and despite some idiocy, most folks were collegial/respectful and the crowd swelled at key moments.

Anyway, apologies to balls, but his team looked overmatched in this one. The first half was indeed very close, but in the second half…different story.

Perhaps even more important, though, was these guys with their thermos of take-from-home hot dogs to fish around in and then shove into rolls.  Gross, ingenious, or yes?

Speaking of gross, here’s a mascot shot. A magpie is a bird, and the Collingwood Magpies are called the Pies for short, but I learned through failure that no one calls the birds themselves pies for short. And no one made a creampie joke, so no idea what this world is coming to.

Score worm, though I don’t think it was as close as indicated:

Full match highlights here:

Ok, that’s enough for tonight. If you want more on the other two AFL games I attended, let me know.  Otherwise I may need to put my boots away for a little bit.

What’s on tonight?

Dude(s and dudettes), you just had a full weekend plus Monday of football. That isn’t enough to tide you over til Thursday? Fiiiiine.

Béisbol

Yankees at BoSox, 6:10pm DFO time on TBS

Other baseball available locally on local affiliates depending on your local locality.

I think that’s it.  I’m sure you can find coverage somewhere of Jets fans rending their garments over the loss of a tendon. But get pumped, round two of the AFL finals starts Friday in Australia, which means the wee hours of our Thursday night/Friday morning depending on your time zone and sleep schedule. It’s never too late to get into footy (though it is too late to get tickets to the Carlton-Melbourne game, that shit sold out almost immediately.