Perth: Sports Nuts, That's What We Are!

The Kamikazes: (l to r front) Kammy, Cass, Mark, Adrian. Back: Heather, Mike, Todd. Top: Kammy's daughter.
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Aussies love their sports.  And most of you who know us know that we're both very interested in sports as well.  Volleyball in particular.  We knew that we wanted to be able to play volleyball during our stay in Perth, so it was nice that we were asked to play on not one, but two different teams.

The first team was in an indoor beach volleyball league.  We had lots of fun and made some great friends.  We were called Kamikaze (after one girl named Kammy) and we ended up in first place in our division.  In fact, we were undefeated during regular league play.  It was actually a bit embarrassing because most of the teams that we played, we beat them by scores like 33-5.  Oh well.  Of all things to happen though, we lost out to the #2 team in the finals.  Maybe we got a bit too cocky and let it slip through our fingers.  Plus, we're pretty sure that the other team brought in new players that we not regular members of their team just for the finals.  No sour grapes here though.  Still, Heather and I were pretty annoyed because the winners of the finals received medals.  We would have loved those as souvenirs of our time in Australia.  AAAAAHHHHHH!!!  Thanks to our teammates for making us feel so welcome: Todd, Mark, Cass, Paul, Kami and Adrian.  And Todd, that offer to meet up in Las Vegas or San Francisco still stands.

Heather's previous biggest crowd was to watch the Saskatoon Blades play at Sask Place

Mel was very helpful in explaining all of the different parts of the Footy game.
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Our other team was in an indoor court volleyball league.  We were called Reginald (not sure where that name came from...no one on the team was named Reggie).  Even though we were able to play with these guys for only one month, we had lots of fun.  Great group of teammates!  Lots of laughs along with great team spirit.  Our favourite way to play!  Thanks to Scott, Andrew, Chris and Kate.

In other sporting news, we have to thank our good friend Melita (Mike's co-worker at Kidsafe) for taking us to see our first "Footy" game.  That's short for Australian Rules Football, kind of a variation of rugby and American football.  We were there to see the Perth team (the West Coast Eagles) beat the St. Kilda Saints (a team from Melbourne) by a convincing score of 84 - 66.

We got to watch a nice sunset as the game was going on.
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WIthout getting too technical (mainly because I'm still not sure of all the specifics), you have to kick the ball through the posts at either end of the oval field to score.  That's worth 6 points.  If the ball goes wide or hits the posts, it's worth only one point.  What an encouraging sport:  "Oh, too bad, you missed...hey, cheer up... you gave it your best shot...tell you what, take a point...why not...a good effort like that deserves something."  The main difference between footy and american football (called "gridiron" here), is that in footy the play pretty much keeps on going.  Gridiron has lots of start/stop action.  In footy players have to pass the ball either by kicking it or "handballing" it, which is basically just hitting it with your fists.  A basic throw or shovel pass is not allowed.  If you catch a kicked ball you're allowed to "mark it".  What that means is that you can prepare yourself without anyone getting in your way and you can give the ball a good kick.  If you mark the ball within kicking distance from the posts you stand a good chance to score a six pointer (technically called a "six pointer").  It's a pretty rough sport with lots of physical action.  The most amazing thing is that they don't wear any pads.  In fact, I've heard Aussies make fun of "gridiron" because it has too many pads.  I think footy players wear a mouth guard and maybe a can to protect their important bits, but that's it.

Our seats were high up but we could still watch the play just fine
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The game we got to watch was the season opener which was a sell out, so we were surrounded by about 43,000 screaming Eagles fans.  For both of us this was the biggest sporting crowd we've ever been a part of.  Heather's previous biggest crowd was to watch the Saskatoon Blades play at Sask Place (~ 10,000 people).  So it was pretty exciting.  The West Coast Eagles even have their own theme song that all fans seem to know by heart.  It goes a little something like this (ahem):

The fans went nuts when the Eagles scored.
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Hey Eagles, hey Eagles, hey Eagles, hey Eagles We're flying high, we're flying high We're flying high, we're flying high We're the Eagles, the West Coast Eagles And we're here to show you why We're the big birds, kings of the big game We're the Eagles, we're flying high We're flying high, we're flying high We're flying high And on and on. Thanks again Mel!! We had a great time!

Michael and Heather