Why footy?

    I love footy.

    Why?

    I love watching athletic genius. Watching Gary Ablett Jr. sell the candy and deke three opponents out of their shorts to score a goal from thirty meters out on the run. Watching Paddy Dangerfield weave through a field of players to hit Tom Hawkins unnoticed in the goal square because the defense was focused on Paddy. Watching Lance Franklin roll to his left and launch a seventy-meter boomer through the goal posts halfway up. Watching Jeremy Howe grab a mark three meters up in the air, and then watching Joe Daniher take one even higher the next week. Watching the leaping ability of a Nic Natainui or the strength of a Majak Daw or the speed of a Gary Rohan. I love watching great goal-kickers: watching Josh Kennedy in the second quarter Sunday put on a clinic for West Coast, or Ben Brown bag a bundle when the Kangaroos seemingly have nothing to play for. And as much as I love team genius like the Richmond run ending in Caddy’s goal in the third Sunday, I also love the individual persistence of a Callen Ward, fighting on full strength when the rest of his Giants team was mailing it in by the fourth quarter.

    I love watching the drama off the field. Watching coaches in the press box emote, free of the constrictions of decorum on the sidelines where their players could see their frustrations - exhorting, exulting, even expletiving at times. Watching the agony of an injured Lin Jong on the sidelines realizing he might miss the Bulldogs’ ride to the top.  Watching the quiet dignity of Bob Murphy fade away as his precious team completed the impossible dream, and then watching Luke Beveridge make grown man cry by presenting Murph his medal. Watching coaches post-game be completely honest (98% of the time) with their evaluations and frustrations and excitement.

     I love watching the physical adjustment players have to make into a four-goal wind. I love watching the umpire deal with the vagaries of the center bounce, and I love watching the players deal with the vagaries of the wild, over the head hurling of the ball in from the sidelines. I love seeing the AFL take the game to Cairns and Tassie and Darwin and Ballarat and all over the country, to share the game we love. I love watching the seagulls land on the grass at the MCG while a Grand Final is taking place, reminding us how unimportant playing our little games really is.

    I love watching the human storylines unfold. I love watching the resurrection of a talented player who finds his lost confidence before our eyes. I love watching seventeen veterans race to congratulate a debutante who joins the first-kick, first-goal club. I love the behind the scenes videos of the club presenting a rookie with his first guernsey, or the coach telling the kid he’s going to get his first AFL game this week. I love watching a Dangerfield return to Adelaide, to the chorus of boos that mean ‘We hate that you left’, and the signs of friendship from the players he left behind. I love that having “feeder” leagues like the WAFL and the VFL allows struggling athletes to play their way back into form, or injured athletes to play their way back into shape.

     I love the variability of the AFL. I love that the competition is so close that we saw whoever the seventeenth-placed team happened to be, win every single game they played from round seven through fourteen. I love that we can have a round like R7 this year where all nine games were won by the team that was lower on the ladder. I love that while the finals are set up so that the season is meaningful and the best team in the season usually wins the cup (or at least one of the two or three best), every once in awhile you can have a team like the 2016 Bulldogs pull off a stunning run to a title. I love that Richmond can go from an afterthought last year into one of the major contenders this season. Or that Fremantle could go “from the penthouse to the outhouse” in one year, as they did from ‘15 to ‘16 to everyone’s surprise. Or that Sydney could do both in one year.

    I love that you can’t take a single game for granted in the AFL. In a fixture of 198 games, you’d think there would be some that you could completely ignore, knowing the outcome in advance. Unfortunately for them, the teams themselves sometimes think they “know the outcome in advance”, and that’s when all hell breaks loose and the upsets start flying.

    In Round Five, the Western Bulldogs were 3-1 and still in championship form, and came up against the youth-laden 1-3 Brisbane Lions at Etihad, the Doggies’ home stadium. They were almost 50-point favorites. Every prediction I ran across had them winning. It’s the only time all season I’ve seen a fan vote literally predict 100% to zero in one team’s favor. On top of all of that, it was Bob Murphy’s 300th game in the league. So, obviously, Brisbane came out making shot after shot, going 9.0 bef0re finally missing a shot in the second quarter, by which time they were 38 point leaders over a Western team that ended the first period shooting an abysmal 15 percent kicking efficiency, and ended the half 5.13. It took until the fourth quarter for the Bulldogs to get their sea legs to the point where they could finally pass the Lions, and when they did they ran past them and won by 32, but that was the most ironic singing of a team song I’ve ever heard!

    In a league of “just” eighteen teams (as an American, I’m used to 30-32 in each of our major pro sports leagues), there’s a shortage of “hangers-on”, a dearth of players who really don’t deserve to be playing in the league. As of round 18, about 640 young men have stepped on the pitch for an AFL team this season, and when you look at some of the players who haven’t gotten that opportunity yet this year, you realize the talent levels that have to be above them to crowd them out. Watching Brett Eddy rip up the NAB pre-season games for Port and still not be able to hold a place in the best 22 for the Power tells you how good their roster is - and you can find similar stories in every franchise, Brisbane to Fremantle. In fact, as much as Freo has struggled, it took until R16 for them to unleash a 21-year-old Ryan Nyhuis, who only spent his first AFL game playing the unfamiliar position of forward and kicking four goals to lead the Dockers to a win over North.

    I love the sport in general. It’s a sport where the individual battles within the war can be just as absorbing as the war itself. It’s the joy of watching Bernie Vince of the Demons tagging Rory Sloane of the Crows. It’s watching Alex Rance holding the fort against Lance Franklin inside 50. It’s watching Paddy Ryder and Max Gawn battle in the ruck.  It’s watching the soldiers battle with strength and speed without armor, the best athletes in Australian sport (says the Roar’s crack team of writers).

    But it’s more than that: It’s watching the concern the moment there’s an injury on either side of the pitch, uniform color be damned. It’s watching the AFL incorporate the women not just into a league of their own but in the announcing booth and in the administration as if it’s nothing to bat an eye at. It’s watching the reaction of the footy community when Adam Goodes or Eddie Betts were being harassed by the lowlifes we have to allow into the stadiums until they reveal themselves, coming to their universal support when they were needed. It’s experiencing the outpouring of love for the players and family of Phil Walsh when he was needlessly killed mid-season two years back; watching Alastair Clarkson and Nathan Buckley organize the midfield circle after the Hawthorn/Collingwood game without anyone’s foreknowledge was one of the most profound experiences of my life, even sitting at home alone here in the US, ten thousand miles away.

    Why do I love footy?

    It’s an extended family. And by extension as a fan, it’s my extended family.

[Originally published in The Roar, July 24, 2017.]