Australian Rules

Last year, the AFL (Australian Football League) played their first game for points outside Australia at the Westpac Stadium. This year, they decided to repeat the experiment, again on ANZAC day, with a match between St Kilda ("Saints") and the Brisbane Lions. I've been to one AFL match before, when I visited Australia in 2007, but Nicola had never been.

We drove into town early in order to be reasonably certain of finding a park. We headed into the stadium and went upstairs to the new mezzanine bar and dining area, which has just opened. This offers a slightly more upmarket experience to the stadium-goer than the standard burgers, hotdogs, pies and beer available on the concourse. Whilst these are, to some (many?) an essential part of the stadium experience, there is a significant section of the sports-watching population who want something a bit better to eat, and the stadium have belatedly realised that there's money to be made by offering it inside. The menu was chicken schnitzel burger, spicy meatballs, vegetarian burrito, nasi goreng and roast beef in Yorkshire pudding. The bar also serves a better type of beer than the standard Speight's available downstairs (although there's nothing wrong with Speight's) including a Crafty Beggars pale ale.

We were woefully ignorant of the rules of AFL, but soon picked them up - 6 points for a goal (between the two inner posts) or 1 point for a "behind" (between the two outer posts). The Lions soon went ahead, and Saints trailed them to a greater or lesser degree throughout most of the game, finally levelling the scores late in the fourth quarter at 75-75. The extent of their missed chances can be gauged by the final score of 82-79 to the Lions, as they missed 4 chances on goal, whilst the Lions scored 1 and 1 behind.

So, following our first rugby league game a couple of weeks ago, that's another sporting duck broken. Next... netball!