Are you ready for some . . . "football"?

Honoring the beginning of the college football season beginning this week, I wanted to post about Australian "football."  This past Saturday, Callie, Dom and I went to watch the Parramatta Eels play the Bankstown 

Bulldogs, which are two teams in the National Rugby League. The game was actually played at the ANZ Stadium, which was the national stadium for the Sydney Olympics in 2000.  

While it certainly didn't have the sentimental appeal of Bryant-Denny or Jordan-Hare, the stadium itself is spectacular.  Surrounded by sculpture gardens and light towers and elaborate fountains, the stadium looks a little bit like a giant satellite dish.  Modern- yet pleasantly aged- it was far from full, but it wasn't hard to imagine how exciting it must have been during the Sydney Games.  Parramatta ended up winning in exciting fashion, but Callie and I both found ourselves subtly wishing that we had we had been watching Alabama or Auburn.   

The first thing to understand about rugby in Australia is that there are three different kinds or "codes": rugby league, rugby union, and Australian rules.  Each code is played differently- different numbers of players, different scoring, and even different sized and shaped fields.  It has taken us the better part of our time here to differentiate each, but on any given weekend, all three codes will be in action.  The Wallabies, Australia's national rugby team, play rugby union, which is considered to be the "educated" version of the sport.  Elite private schools and universities are the purveyors of rugby union as it has a reputation of being more sophisticated.  Rugby league (what we saw on Saturday) appears to be a more commercialized code that is popular because it's more violent in nature.  Australian rules is a code that was originally played in Victoria and has since proliferated nation-wide.  As an outsider, Australian rules looks a lot like soccer.  The players do more kicking of the ball, but it's a faster, higher-scoring game than the other codes.  The games are 80 minutes long with two 40-minute halves, and play is continuous without the starts and stops like American football.

While rugby will never have the nostalgic allure of college football- with the tailgating, the crisp fall afternoons, and the atmosphere of ritual and expectation- we have enjoyed the game nonetheless. We particularly enjoy watching the Wallabies, and it’s hard not to get caught up in the national excitement that accompanies each game.  So, with the arrival of football season this weekend, we offer our best to our respective allegiances as we can’t help but miss the opportunity to attend arguably the greatest of Southern traditions.