Two Weekends of Football

I have been trying to decide how to write this post for a couple of days now to no avail, so it looks like I'll just have to jump in and flounder about hoping not to drown.

I spent a fair amount of the last two weekends watching football on the telly, on weekend 1 it was the AFL (Australian Football League) Grand Final, at this point its probably fair to say that I grew up with and love AFL, on weekend two I watched the NRL (National Rugby League) grand final, the non use of capital letters here for grand final was accidental but it does sum up to some degree my feelings about the day.

The pre game entertainment lulled me of to sleep, I was sorry to miss Jessica  Mauboy as I quite like her, the headline act was Ricky Martin about whom I have no real feelings, I believe from comments made after the match that the crowd booed him after his performance, I can't substantiate this however as I slept through it only to wake up just before the main event to find that my TV had also got bored and turned itself off too... true!!!

The big game finally got underway and despite the very enthusiastic commentary I was immediately reminded of the two things I find unappealing about NRL, first is the sheer brutality of the game and second is the constant stop start manner the game is played, after each admittedly brief stoppage the players advance somewhere between nil and say 5 metres, sure at some stage there can be an exciting Try scored, in this game there were two such Brilliant and exciting Tries scored that even had skeptical me cheering them on.

Another annoying thing to a casual watcher like me is the commentary teams use of dual names, each club in the NRL has a real name and a nickname, in this case The Sydney "Roosters" and The Manly Warringah "Sea Eagles", stay with me here, the commentaters used any combination of Sydney, Manly, Roosters, (even sometimes Chooks), Sea eagles (or Eagles) to describe the play that was occurring, my head was spinning by the finish as to who was winning and even who I was supporting!!!!!!!! Sydney were the eventual winners 26 to 18. (I'm fairly sure I was barracking for them).

Are you getting the opinion yet that I found weekend 2 less than satisfying?

Weekend 1 on the other hand was a well presented whole days program that kept me interested all through, the game itself played between Hawthorn (Hawks), and Fremantle (Dockers or sometimes just Freo) yeah they have multiple names too but as a general rule only one gets used, back to the game, it was a very lame Game by AFL standards for the first half but the 2nd half fired up to become a good and close game.

As with all AFL games the pace was at times frenetic, there was the usual number of spectacular marks, brilliant runs and kicks with pretty much no stoppages, Hawthorn were the eventual  Premiers with a 15 point win (77 to 62) and my thoughts.... A good days entertainment.