Literal Boots on the Ground: Get in the Game! Part 1

As some of you may have noticed, my writing pace around these parts has been…less than prolific lately.  Nothing personal against the clubhouse, I’ve just had my joie de vivre sucked right out a really hard time sitting down to work write. BUT(T) as Balls frequently reminds everyone, I promised I’d write up a few boots on the ground for you all (literally years ago at this point) so consider this a downpayment on some overdue writing bills!

When I came back from my inaugural visit to Australia about two three years ago, I got myself on the dislist for the local USAFL club, the DC Eagles, since I heard they had a Grand Final watch party at the Australian Embassy. Unfortunately, I was out of town for the big game, so I couldn’t watch the match live in such an august setting with a bunch of Aussie ex-pats, but the emails kept coming. And since the first time I actually touched a sherrin was at a Giants game in Sydney, I started to get curious.  So I lobbed an email into the club president–

To which the response was basically, “come on by, but don’t be shocked if you end up liking it so much you join the team.”

Well, my imaginary friends. That’s exactly what happened. So here is a downpayment on  literal boots on the ground about my adventures (so far) playing Aussie Rules Footy in America.

For some background, those of you that have been around the clubhouse know that Aussie rules footy (which we’re just gonna call “footy” from here on out) is a fucking incredible sport that to the untrained eye looks like a mashup of rugby, soccer, American football, and maybe hurling. Kinda looks like to the trained eye, too, or closer to Gaelic football but without the nets and goalies.  I like to describe it as “imagine if every player on a team could kick with the accuracy an NFL quarterback throws, and everything is moving much much faster.” Great fucking sport. And the upper echelon of footy is the AFL, the Australian Football League. Like other sports, there are other feeder leagues–mainly the VFL, SANFL, and WAFL. Though naturally the South and Western Australians would be livid at me describing the last two as feeder leagues, but for Americans it’s easier to think of them as minor league systems despite the VFL really being the AFL’s reserve league nowadays. There are also club-affiliated “academies” to coach young players and be a pipeline to the pros. Those leagues and clubs also have another objective, which is to expand footy’s reach and popularity (to make more money, duh).

Well just like the NFL, the pursuit of profit does not stop at the water’s edge. So there’s an AFL UK, AFL Ireland, AFL Canada, AFL Israel, AFL Germany, and yes, the USAFL. These are all AFL-sanctioned and affiliated leagues with multiple clubs playing footy in the same town in some cases (like London, not in say North Texas). Typically there is a mix of Aussie ex-pats and crazy randos looking for a good time. A lot of the clubs, like DC’s, have both men’s and women’s teams and play a mix of “metros” or intra squad matches, and club games including tournaments like regionals and yes, nationals. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

That first practice, what everyone else had in common is that unlike me, they knew how to kick a footy. Or at least seemed to know better than I did.

Sure, in theory, I understood. I’d been watching the game for years, so I knew you dropped it and kicked it. But I was trying to punt something that did not want to be punted.  An AFL footy is indeed oblong like an NFL football, but it’s rounder and feels lighter and bigger at the same time. So it was with some trepidation that I showed up in my old baseball cleats with the soles starting to peel off and flop around as I did my tubby equivalent of jogging to join warm up drills before practice.

Thank the Lord the Aussies (except the rare Nazi ones) have earned their reputation as kindhearted and funny fuckers. And fortunately that temperament appeared to have propagated amongst the Americans as well. Just about everyone at that practice had been playing the sport for years, with a few exceptions, and yet everyone seemed to have infinite patience for me, this 40-something out of shape dude who clearly had less idea what he was doing than a Mormon on his wedding night.

The teams are largely self administered, with club officers voted upon and then coaches nominated and captains named. The DC team was (and is) about 30-40% Aussie ex-pats and then almost all Americans with the odd Irish or English player tossed in. One of the (American) guys who’d been around the team a while told me he’d pair up with me to show me the basics of handballing and kicking, though the first basic is really the drop.

That’s how it started. Getting my hand held through the basics of a sport, learning a new one for the first time since squash in college, and seeing a bunch of guys and gals super enthusiastic to share their sport with me. Kicking and handballing and all that was a warm up, then came actual drills. They were foreign and confusing at first, but I was mesmerized…kinda like the first time you see Monica BellucciMonica Bellucci. But that’s all it took for me to be hooked. I wasn’t good or even competent, but I was hooked. I really did think I’d just show up, see what it was like, and maybe stick around to lose a little shape since I prefer exercising as a team sport as opposed to being on a treadmill or in a gym solo. But the next thing you know, I was legitimately part of a team, practicing two times a week (when I was in town, which obviously wasn’t every week) and even made it to my first games.

But that’s for the next post in this BOTG series about lacing up my boots and getting in the game!