SI rant about our great game

[ShockOfHair]

Bumped into a New Yorker last night who talked about how much he loved AFL from watching it on ESPN as a kid.

I remembered this piece from Sports Illustrated in 1981 which was posted to BF a couple of months ago. A wonderful rant about footy, as well as resurrecting a long-ago era.

The Lowdown On Footy Down Under From A Knowledgeable - 11.30.81 - SI Vault

It didn't take long to figure out that the object was to kick the ball through the opponent's goalposts. And that was done often enough to make it seem like a basketball game, with scores regularly ranging up into the hundreds. The terminology the Aussie announcers used was maddeningly obscure?"behinds," "marks," "rovers" and "ball ups." As for the players' names, they sounded like characters right out of Dickens: Rene Kink, Gary Sidebottom, Malcolm Blight. One was called "The Flying Doormat," a feisty little player named Bruce Doull.

[dimelb]

Interesting read, SoH. I wonder what the viewer figures are like these days.
Ron Barassi was in the habit of quoting a US sports writer who raved about the game - did you ever hear it? Or does another site member know who it was and what he said?

[ShockOfHair]

Ah good questions Dimelb.... it seems AFL returned to ESPN last year - though only one game a week and, judging from the comments, not everyone is pleased.

Australian Rules Football, an ESPN programming staple of the 1980s before it began acquiring high-profile domestic sports, is resurfacing on the network.

Aussie Rules Football Returns To ESPN Roots - 2009-08-06 16:37:07 | Multichannel News


Here's another American sporting journo on AFL (and cricket).

Duckworth-Lewis! No wonder he's confused.
ESPN.com - Page2 - We come from a land Down Under