West Coast Eagles

Winter has officially arrived down under and is thankfully nothing like it is at home. It is certainly raining more, usually on a Wednesday night when I play Tennis...but the sun seems to be out fairly often and it remains tee-shirt weather...in winter!!
With the arrival of winter comes AFL, otherwise known as Ozzie Rules Football. Its been running for a few weeks now and I've made a vague attempt to follow the fortunes of Perths 2 sides, the West Coast Eagles and the Freemantle Dockers. Both teams are playing like a bag of shite and are routed to the bottom of the table, Freemantle have won 1 match out of 10, although htis 1 match was against the Eagles and being a derby win counts for alot in bragging rights. Perth (Eagles) have won 2 games and I was fortunate enough to have attended their second game and bring them some good old fashioned Pommie luck. My mate Joel had season tickets and took me along and was good enough to answer my foolish Pom questions throughout the game.
Its a game of 4 quarters, each about 25 minutes long and about a 20 minute break at halftime. The pitch is a massive oval shape, a fair bit bigger than a normal footaball pitch and there are 18 players a side. Their is a goal at either end that has 4 posts, the 2 middle posts are the main goal and you get 6 points if you kick the ball through them, however if the ball hits a post or goes through the other smaller posts then its 1 point. You can chuck the ball to each other, but you have to punch the ball, whilst doing this anyone can tackle you. You can also kick the ball with the object of kicking it to a team mate and him catching it without it touching th pitch. If this happens, its called a 'mark' and the player cannot be tackled and so had a kind of a free kick. Yes it is a bit confusing, but like most thigs, pretty exciting when watched live. Theres a crowd of 40,000 and a decent atmosphere to boot.
One of the stranger things about the game, is the sheer amount of people on the pitch at any one time. 18 players a side, then 3 refs + I think 2 linesmen, also and this is odd, at any time in the game 'Runners' can come onto the pitch, 1 a side I think and just have a chat with the players, you know give them a bit of encourement, pass on some tactics, very wierd. When a goal is scored, loads of people run on the pitch to dosh out water and its just gets plain silly. Oh and its quite violent as well, some decent punches and shoulder barging going on :)



Before I go, another thing that has returned with the coming of winter, is whales!
I love a whale me and its one of many brilliant things about this country to enjoy. There we were having a nice stroll along the beach, on our way to get some beer and oysters at a bar, a bar called 'The Oyster Bar' on Port beach, near Freo when we noticed some funny black fin shapes and alot of splashing. Only about 150 meters off shore were 2-3 Southern Right Whales lolling about, slowly cruising along, how cool is that??!!