The Grand Final

Collingwod and St Kilda played a draw. I was in transit and missed the match but by all accounts it was what they call here ‘a ripper’. Footy is absolutely huge in Victoria, it used to be the VFL before it became the AFL. Yet even in Alice Springs they were talking about it. For the week before it was on every news channel on both radio and telly. The bus driver, on our tour, was a Collingwood fan and mentioned them in every conversation. The pilot on the plane back to Melbourne gave us match updates and everyone cheered or groaned. On my three hour drive back to Warrnambool footy was on some channel the whole time. The same on Sunday, one channel had a phone in, another was transmitting highlights another the whole match. The Sunday paper had 21 tabloid pages at the front on the match and 45 sports pages.
There was not as many flags and colours as at home but that may have been due to the fact that clubs get allegiances from all over and not just a particular area. Families often support different teams. Yet every man woman and child supports a team. In all my months here I have only met one person who did not follow footy. At the beginning of the year there was an article in the Sunday paper which mentioned the top five 2010 comebacks in world sport: Michael Shoemaker, Justine Henin, Kim Clijsters and Tadhg Kennelly!