Despite quite a late night, I managed to get up bright and early so as to get into the city and meet Nic at her hostel, ready for my day as an honorary AFL fan! I was under strict instructions from Ewan to support Melbourne and not Carlton, even though it was more or less a dead certainty that Melbourne would lose. Again, a day of doing very little and taking medicine had made me feel lots better, plus the sun was shining so it looked like it was going to be a good day.
I jumped on a tram at 10am and arrived in the city with enough time before 11am to grab a Starbucks as I walked to the hostel where I found Nic in the reception. She took me into the lounge and we sat chatting for ten minutes, before one of the staff came in and introduced us to the day. Our first part of the AFL adventure was to learn all about it from a video (yes, a VHS video, not a DVD!) called ‘An Introduction to AFL’. They put the film on and sadly, as informative as it was about the rules etc, we couldn’t help but laugh at it, as it was from 1996 and seemed sooooo outdated (we later learned that all the ‘rising young AFL stars’ featured in the film are long since retired!), with their funny haircuts and very 90s fashions! Thankfully, having had the full lowdown from Ewan last night, I was able to understand what was going on and fill in the blanks for Nic.
Film over, the little group of us who were going on the excursion were herded downstairs and outside. Another of Nic’s friends; an Irish guy called Noel, was waiting for us, they met when she was here last time and had also not been to see an AFL game before. Interestingly, when I first saw Noel, I was taken aback by how much he looked like my friend Steff from home (I miss you Steff!) and what was even weirder was that he was wearing a hoodie identical to the Uxbridge College hoodie that Steff and the rest of the Sports team wears – even made by the same company! I think I may have scared Noel a bit by being so surprised at meeting him and telling him how he was the ‘doppelganger’ of my friend! Anyway, I digress - by now it was just after midday and the girl leading us, Ebony, took us to the pub ‘Young & Jackman’s’ which was right on Flinders Street. She explained that it was AFL tradition to go to the pub before going to the game, so she was leaving us there and would collect us at 1pm.
We headed into the pub and got a pint each, before sitting down and introducing ourselves. There was a girl from Thailand, a guy from the Netherlands, a couple from USA, Nic, Noel and me. A motley crew indeed! We chatted and had a couple of drinks, noticing that the very busy pub seemed to be full of people who looked like they were also going to be going to the game. Ebony had told everyone to decide who to cheer for and everyone except me had decided to support Charlton as Ebony had also told them that they were the team most likely to win! I stood my ground and said I was going to cheer for Melbourne, even if they were going to lose – I like to go with the underdog.
After our drinks, we met Ebony and walked up to the MCG, the sun had disappeared and it was looking rather bleak indeed. As we got to the stadium, we realised just how popular AFL must be – there were people everywhere; lots and lots of people! Ebony bought the tickets and took us to where she felt would be the best place for us to sit. We went inside the stadium, up and up all the way to the top tier and into a section of seats she said would be best if it rained – the temperature seemed to have dropped significantly on the walk up to the stadium and the sun was nowhere to be seen, instead much cloud, some of which looking like it might in fact give us the chance to see whether Ebony was right about the seats!
From where we were sitting, the stadium looked absolutely massive. It also looked odd, even though I knew it was going to be an oval pitch, I found it difficult to get my head around; it seems wrong not to be using a rectangle! There were lots of people already in the stands – the capacity of the MCG is 100,000, but it didn’t look like we were going to run out of seats today!
As the game would not be starting for another twenty minutes, I decided to go for a wander about, as we hadn’t seen anything on the way up. I went back down to the ground tier and looked at the pitch from ground level. I then walked half way around the bottom tier before thinking I should head back, but not before grabbing a beer for Nic and I and investing in a Melbourne scarf – it was getting really cold and I stupidly hadn’t brought much in the way of warmth.
When the game started there was a lot of cheering and we sat watching in fascination as the game unfurled beneath us. Sure enough, the things that Ewan and the VHS had told me were all happening and I felt like I knew what was going on. The main problem that both Nic and I had was that there were so many people on the pitch; it was hard to keep tabs of what was going on. Each team has 18 players on the pitch at any one time, plus lots of referees, linesmen and runners, so it was impossible to see what everyone was doing! To make matters worse, there seemed to be a bird convention going on too; there were so many pigeons and seagulls on the pitch, it was quite off-putting!
Sure enough the heavens opened and soon the bottom tiers were cleared as people moved back to escape the torrential rain. For those on the pitch, there was no escape, they played on through the thick of it, even when the rain was so heavy that we couldn’t see across to the opposite side of the stadium! It wasn’t that heavy during the whole game, but it was very chilly indeed, so I set about fashioning my scarf into a kind of headscarf to keep myself as warm as I possibly could. Also, Ebony’s choice of seats were actually quite good – all the rows up to the one in front of us evacuated but we remained more or less dry.
The game itself was very fast paced – far quicker that a regular football match. There was much running, jumping, shoving, kicking and general roughness and sure enough, goals were scored (worth 6 points) and behinds were scored (worth 1 point), although sadly mostly by Carlton. I did my best at cheering for Melbourne, taking my lead from the guy sitting a few rows in front of me, who seemed very passionate about the game and a staunch Melbourne supporter – so I cheered when he did and made angry gruffs when he did; I’m sure I looked like I knew what I was doing, sat there with my beer and Melbourne scarf draped around my head! I then improved the authenticity of the look at the end of the third quarter, by going and buying a pie (another tradition!) and sitting there with that in one hand and the beer in the other!
When the game ended, the score showed a pretty definite win for Carlton; 101 against Melbourne’s 60. Nic, Noel and I made a quick exit, as Nic had to get back to the hostel to check out and go hop on a plane to Perth, so we needed to get ahead of the rest of the 50,000 people who were also trying to leave! Outside, we were presented with a much closer view of the weather and within seconds were drenched! There was nothing we could do, we just ploughed on through the dark, rain, puddles and people, all the way back to Flinders Street, where we said our goodbyes. It has been so nice seeing Nic again and we are hoping that we might be able to catch up with one another in July, just before she goes home.
I realised that I was incredibly cold and incredibly wet, so decided to grab a Starbucks as I walked to the tram stop. That helped warm my hands up a bit as I stood waiting for my tram, clutching the coffee for dear life. I saw lots of Carlton fans looking at me pitifully as they waited next to me – I appreciated that this was very different to how a fan of a winning team would react to a fan of a losing team in the UK! Once on the tram I shivered all the way back, then walked as fast as I could in my dripping wet clothes, as the rain still tipped down on me! Despite feeling cold and wet, I had had a really good day, so was feeling pretty chipper!
Sarah and Tom were really worried about how drenched I was, so told me to hop straight in the shower to warm up. This helped a lot, I put on my nice, warm, dry clothes and hung up my wet ones, then settled down in the lounge with them to watch the film 2012, which had not long started. About half way into the film, we decided it was time for dinner, so hopped into Sarah’s car and grabbed dinner from the ‘Drive Thru’ at Maccas. Back at the house, we tucked into the ‘Family Favourites Box’ as we finished watching the film. We then spent the rest of the evening, chilling out on the sofa watching the new stuff from Ewan’s hard drive – South Park and Family Guy, then a new show I had not heard of called Royal Pains, which was really good.
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