Footy At the MCG

The Melbourne Cricket Grounds.

Saturday, August 6^th.

The International Teachers Association had arranged an get together at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds for Canadian teachers in Victoria and members of the association (they are all teachers who have done exchanges too) who wanted to attend. Carol, Bev and I attended along with several other Canadians and their families.

The MCG was built for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. It has 95 000 seats and has standing room for another 5 000. It was constructed on the site where the original cricket grounds were located in the 1850's.

The game today was between the Hawthorne Hawks and the Melbourne Football Club. Unlike the game we saw a few weeks ago, this one was a close match from the beginning and the lead exchanged several times. It wasn't decided until the last five minutes when Melbourne scored four unanswered goals to win the match. I understood the game better and it is entertaining to watch, but I have to say the field is enormous. They play on the cricket pitch which is a very large oval. I have heard that the game of Australian Rules Football was created to make use of the cricket pitches that were unused most of the year. Soccer and rugby both use a rectangular field like football back home. This helps to explain why they kick the ball to each other instead of throwing it, as they can cover more ground that way. And there are no end zones as the cricket field doesn't have them. The game is part rugby, part soccer, with a dash of basketball, with some unique Australian ideas as well (for example the hand pass which has to be punched to your team mate rather than thrown and the throw in where an official throws the ball back into play by standing with his back to the field and throwing it as far as he can over his head and behind him). Ten of the eighteen teams are from the Melbourne area as the game was invented in Victoria.But there are two teams from Western Australia, two from New South Wales, two from South Australia and two from Queensland. The teams from Melbourne all use the Melbourne Cricket Grounds as their home field so there are often two or three games played there over a weekend. Can you imagine ten hockey teams in Toronto all sharing ACC?

After the game a group of us went to a pub and had a drink and dinner. We had a chance to talk about our teaching assignments and experiences. One couple is unhappy with their remote small town placement at Echuca (I went there a couple of months ago), but everyone else seems quite happy.