I know full well and good that almost no one who stops by actually cares about this, because they think that football is a game in which the pointy-ended “ball” gets picked up and carried, but the New York Times reports that the US national team has qualified for the 2010 World Cup being held in South Africa.
Hopefully they won’t get dismissed in the first round, as happened in 2006 in Germany.
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6 comments
Ha! I know the USA play’s *REAL* footy! And it’s getting pretty big. I think there are about 30 teams that compete in the National league now! It’s big in Atlanta apparently. 🙂
AARFL
Wikipedia- Australian rules football in the United States
The *real* official AFL site!
AFL
Amazing! 😀 (Lot of Aussies living in the USA. Crazy people.) 😉
The real football only exists in areas with large immigrant populations, although it has become a very popular children’s game, especially with parents, because shoes and shin guards don’t cost nearly as much as the equipment for baseball, and no where near the cost of the protective gear for American football.
I started playing when we lived in Germany, and have followed ever since, although my team, Alemannia Aachen, can’t seem to get out of Bundeslige 2. It takes real dedication to support a team called “the potato bugs”. [It’s the uniform, if the yellow and black had been horizontal, they could have been the bees or hornets.]
My younger brother played real football and Rugby for local clubs in and after college. He would have loved Australian rules.
I had a friend who was a referee and I used to give him rides when his car didn’t run [often], but the parents were a major annoyance. These were kids leagues, and the parents acted like it was the FA Cup. I told the guy he needed to start carrying a weapon to protect him from the parents. Most of the parents would have been better off if they started playing with their kids and running around a little, instead of just driving and bitching.
When I was working in the USA, one of guy’s I worked with there was an ex-pat Aussie who’d been there about 5 years. He took me to a gridiron game one weekend (I forget who the teams were), and it was interesting, even though I didn’t get it. Anyway, it went on… and I looked at the clock and thought “hey… isn’t it supposed to be over?” And nudged my companion and asked why it hadn’t finished. He pointed to a guy and said “You see that guy in the striped shirt?” And I said “Yeah…” (suspiciously, I knew my friend by now!) And he said “Well, when he decides that everyone has had enough and he wants to go home, he call’s it quits!” and laughed! And I said “Ha,ha. Very funny.” Anyway… I went to a few more games, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t begin to think he was right! I doubt any two of the games I saw went for the same time! Very strange. 😆
We have a LOT of… disagreements (to put it politely) over *real* Football here, between the Aussie Rules fanatics, and the Soccer crazies, and not to forget Rugby League nutters and the Rugby Union lunatics!! 😆 I expect there will be a civil war over it one day. 😉 And now we have the original Gaelic Football growing in popularity here (I think there are a few teams now)! Yeah… We love our footy (so long as it isn’t Gridiron! We don’t get that.
I think the first time I actually saw an American football game was as a sophomore in high school [tenth year]. That was part of being a military brat and growing up without television. Frankly I have never understood the logic of calling it football, and feet and the ball rarely make contact.
The games take forever because there is almost no real flow to them. They spend more time talking about what they are going to do than actually doing anything. A real football match is rarely stopped. Baseball is even slower.
Of course, nothing will ever approach cricket for boring. I think NewsBiscuit is right about cricket.
LOL Yeah… I’m not big on the Test matches! 😉 But they are a *test* of stamina and endurance mostly. 🙂 You should see a 20/20 game! Now that is frantic! Even a ‘limited overs’ (one day game) get’s pretty frantic at times. 🙂
I played baseball here at College. 🙂 I like baseball actually, a good friend was an umpire, and his son was a pitcher who ended up pitching for a US major league team (in the 90’s). A number of Aussies play for the US major’s.
My Mother is a fan of baseball, something she picked up from her Father, who was a FAN!!!!! He played on his local company team for years, and was attached to his radio or TV for games.
I played at various times, but was one of the world’s worst fielders. People rarely believe you when you say that, and want you to actually demonstrate your lack of ability in games. The problem was that I was a decent hitter, and they thought that was important until they realized how truly abysmal I was catching and throwing a ball.