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August 15, 2005

Swans Go Round the Park...

On the weekend, the Swans went round the park with Brisbane - twice. I used that phrase at work and some of the guys looked at me very blankly. Maybe the phrase is AFL specific or maybe it was a regionalism that I picked up as a kid - basically to "go round the park" means to double the other teams score. To go round twice means triple the score and so on.

The final scores were: Swans 19.10 (124) def. Lions 6.4 (40) and 124 > 3 x 40 so that is round the park twice :-)

Sydney are fourth on the table and there are only two games left in the main season - next week against the Kangaroos (5th) and then my old favourites the Hawks (14th). Given that next week is a home game for the Swans (playing at the SCG), they would have to be favourites to win. Ditto for the following week (away game) against Hawthorne. Even with two losses, the Swans would remain in the top 8 but two more wins would cement a place in the top four which means they get two bites at the finals. Hoping for a grand-final win might still be over-optimistic but at least they are looking more like contenders than last year...

Posted by Ozguru at August 15, 2005 10:00 PM

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Comments

Fourth, at what? In the U.S. it is baseball season, soon to be football season. But I don't know what kind of season the Swans are having. Rugby? Cricket? Football? Skiing? Probably not tiddly-winks, but could be, I guess.

Posted by: Old Horsetail Snake at August 16, 2005 04:45 AM

Hmmmm. I should have explained that a bit more.

The Swans (actually the 'Sydney Swans') are an AFL (Australian Football League - also known as Aussie Rules) team. It is a very physical, demanding game played in Australia (sort of Gaelic football but with less opportunities to kill the opposition). It is probably the biggest thing I would miss if I moved to the US.

What is it like? Nothing that you have in the US. You play "football" (gridiron) but that is all stop/start and the players are all covered in protective gear. Here we play four different forms of football: Soccer (European "football" with a round ball), Rugby Union (European "Rugby"), Rugby League (see below) and AFL. The two most popular are Rugby League (a violent game played with big blokes who pound each other into the mud - sort of like gridiron with no padding and no breaks for the advertisements) and AFL (a rapid game which is more like a cross between football and basketball). In AFL, the best players can jump over the heads of other players to catch the ball on the full and kick accurately over distances of 50 meters (150 feet). I will see if I can post an article with a better explanation sometime next weekend....

Posted by: Ozguru [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 16, 2005 09:36 PM