Friday Fab Foreign Footy
Aussie Rules –
The AFL started its season with 2016 Premiership winners Western Bulldogs handling Collingwood 15.10-100 to 12.14-86 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The Richmond Tigers swatted Carlton 20.12-132 to 14.5-89. The good news for the Blues is that they have 10 days to get themselves sorted out before they take on Melbourne.
Western Bulldog
The league really gets going Saturday, with a full slate of fixtures. Some matches of the top-of-the-table teams include the heavily favored Sydney Swans taking on Port Adelaide Power, Geelong vs. Freemantle Dockers, but the best match is likely to be the (Premiership betting favorites) GWS Giants (#4 in 2016) against the Adelaide Crows (#5).
Champions League –
There hasn’t been too much action in the Champions League, other than lots of teams being fined for their rowdy fans. Barcelona, St. Etienne, Arsenal, Bayern, and Manchester City all racking up fines.
There won’t be any matches until April 11, when the Quarterfinals start with Juventus vs. Barca, and Dortmund vs. Monaco.
Rubgy (pasted in by Swiss Servator, naturally)-
The Southern Hemisphere is so damned good at Rugby, and often tired of trouncing everyone else, that the various nations of the lower half of the planet set up Super Rugby. teams from the various killer rugby lands (New Zealand, Australia, South Africa are now joined by Japanese and Argentine squads) get together in a 4 conference brawl that turns out some of the best rugby you can see. Go here and find a team to cheer for! *Cough* Brumbies *Cough*
This. Is. Super. Rugby.
Not ready, I’ll ge back to my plastic crack. I just discovered that it should be easy to make custom transfer sheets. I probably won’t see the sun for a while (not that it shines on upstate new york)
“The Southern Hemisphere is so damned good at Rugby”
And right now, most of the NZ teams are so far ahead of everyone else, that it looks there’ll be a cull of Australian and South Africa teams:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11818213
New Zealand….a set of islands used as the world’s largest rugby proving ground.
My favorite part of Ozzie Rules Footyball is the referees, in their lab coats and goofy hats.
Times have changed:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/linkableblob/4280264/data/goal-umpire-chelsea-roffey-in-action-during-an-afl-match-in-2005-data.jpg
https://halfbackflanker.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/umpie.jpg?w=500
Do they go back to the old school wear for the Championship match?
Nope. They’re actually talking about getting rid of the center bounce as a means to re-start play.
Damn – they can’t do that, it is too much fun!
What would be the alternative?
Ok, my lazy ass googled it.
They would just throw it up in the air instead of bouncing it. It’s my “fun” sport, not my “serious” sport, but I can’t get all bent outta shape about that.
They’ll throw it up in the air: this is already the practice if the field is really wet or muddy. I tried to find a clip online but no luck.
Boo!
Whenever I watch Rugby, the rules-analyzin generalization-generatin part of my brain gets activated, and all I can do is compare it to American Football, and come to the conclusion that me made better rule changes than they did.
Australian Rules Football however, you can totally tell it was made up by a bunch Aussies who had seen pictures of Rugby played once, and they just figured out how to make it work on a Cricket Field. Much more enjoyable/entertaining for me. More like tackle kick-basketball.
hmmm. (envisions UFC/NBA merger)
What are the weird scoring numbers?
Goals, behinds and total points. See here for further elucidation.
I think the first score is the skill points awarded for their endzone dance, and the second are points earned for kicking the ball through some sort of shape.
A tesseract from the looks of it.
unnecessary details.
the first is the two handed signaled goals, the second is the one handed signaled sorta goals. The big number is the total points those are worth.
I tried to start a rugby league vs rugby union debate the other day but it didnt take.
League is far superior.
Did it fail to take, or was there a general malaise of apathy towards the subject on the part of the people you were talking to?
It is not really a debate – there is Union and there is the farce that is League.
League is a lot like deep dish.
NOT IT IS NOT! LEAGUE IS NOT DELICIOUS!
I can never remember which is which. Is that the one that had 6 downs, or the one that has infinite downs?
But you do recall that they were all depressed?
League has 6 downs, union has infinity downs.
Union also has more punts out of bounds.
That is the one I prefer. I can at least follow the game somewhat. When you get infinite trys at a touchdown and causing a fumble seems to always be referred to as a “knock on”, it just seems kind of pointless.
League is the slightly upgraded touch football.
How does one play ‘touchless’ football?
Video game.
Or you play “tackle” instead of “touch”.
Maybe it could Jedi vs Sith, using only the Force?
League = “we don’t want to do anything other than what is a practice drill”
Union = real rugby, not some winter, indoor quasi-sport.
I don’t know nuthin ’bout
birthin no babiesleague versus union, but rugby sevens kicks ass. Those guys are ATHLETES.I managed one season of 7s one summer at U of IL. I would rather scrum 100 times than run that much ever again.
A friend of mine studied abroad in Australia in college. The next semester some of the friends he made down there came up to our college for a semester. When I met them I made the grave mistake of assuming they were Australian… They were Kiwis. I don’t want to talk about the mutually agreed punishment for making that mistake. It brings up bad memories.
It must have involved too much Steinlager and being raked by Canterbury rugby boots.
Steinlager would have more than sufficient for a punishment.
Yes, there are many that say one Steinlager is “too much Steinlager”.
You didn’t realize until they got down in a hakka, severed your head and grilled it for dinner.
Times have changed
Booooooooo!
Ok, since this thread seems like the place to bring this up, one more aspect that I think Aussie-Rules is better than either flavor of Rugby: The referees. Not just the scoring signals either. AFL refs seem like american refs/umpires: they are there to enforce the rules, and if you don’t like that, then fuck off. Rugby refs (while no where near as bad), seem to have a little bit of that part-time-marriage counselor feel that soccer refs have. It irritates me just a little to think of one them giving a player a “calm down” gesture (pushing down against an imaginary force with both hands) …. Either they just broke a rule or they didn’t, stop griping about their emotional state.
E B, they are letting them know they are getting close to the boundary of “you want me to add another 5 meters on to this penalty?” Just think how hair trigger NCAA basketball refs are….rugby officials are quite the opposite.
Fair enough. If Basketball the other extreme, I can see not wanting to go that far. Although I’d blame the rules of Basketball for that more than the ref style, which I still prefer.
I wish I had the energy to stir the pot more. I think it’s almost time to go home and take a nap.
(raises a finger, thinks better of it, goes back to fake-work)
Nice. I’m struggling to even continue fake-working.
Red Beans and Rice Lunch special ends at 2. And I have to stop at home first. If I leave now I could make it, and still call this a 3 hour day.
What are you, a state worker?
Nah. Just a contractor, with a flexible schedule and a nearly empty office.
🙁
If I, a state worker, can’t make state worker jokes, who can?
True. We’re not nearly as bad as federal workers, anyway.
I’ve got to that point in my fandom of Rugby in that now, I don’t really have team loyalty.
I don’t even mind the RWC, mismatched though so many of the teams are, as long as there’s some entertaining play – ideally between teams with radically different styles (USA vs Ireland in 2012, IIRC) Like watching a couple of ballet dancers taking on George Foreman in level III body armor.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. DO NOT FORGET JAPANESE BRUTALS IN THE THE MOST RECENT RWC. ZARDOZ WAS PLEASED WITH THE SONS OF THE RISING SUN.
Hey, ZARDOZ is a Sinophile!
Sinophile would be China lover, you’re looking for japanophile or nipponophile. Unless you want to get a bunch of East Asians riled up because you can’t tell them apart.
yamatophile?
Otaku.
Weeaboo
gesundheit
I’m an ainuphile, for the ultimate hipster cred.
Oh crap, you are right – That would have got me in a bunch of trouble out East…
Fuckin’ weeaboos.
On his days off, ZARDOZ can be seen driving around the vortex in a 1983 Daihatsu Charade.
Any game with Wales in it seems to be entertaining.
Well, when a Wales game is on, I pretty much have to take sides.
For, I should hope.
Mais non, je suis un rosbif, monsieur.
Hmmm…. *slight narrowing of gaze*
Pretty sure he’s an Englishman, so he’s working for that Marcher Lord title.
The upside of a Wales game is that it’s usually watchable, a luxury that doesn’t always extend to an England game.
I still wear my 2003 England WRC Champions jersey on occasion.
They did good (mostly) in that competition.
I keep telling Greenpeace this, but they won’t listen
The Welsh didn’t appreciate their last effort the “shave the wales”, nor did they accept an appology about a misplaced letter.
I miss 1980s ESPN when they showed AFL all the time because they really didn’t have anything else.
This, absolutely this. I used to watch AFL quite a bit back then when I was a kid, both on ESPN and our regional sports channel (HTS). Learned the rules, knew the teams and some of the players, and enjoyed the hell out of it. By the mid-late ’90s, it was gone. Haven’t seen it in forever and don’t remember much of anything about it besides the difference between goals and behinds and what a mark is. It’s a shame because it’s a helluva lot of fun to watch.
What JB and Chip said.
Also the Merseyside Derby is tomorrow and I’ll be drinking at the pub at 7:30 AM. Fun times.
For those unfamiliar with AFL: goals and behinds. Goals are worth 6, behinds are worth 1. So 10 goals and 15 behinds would be scored 10.15.75, (or 10.15-75)
Swiss should be happy, as the Western Bulldogs have won a couple good victories, including a big one over Sydney. Rhywun and Raven Nation (Collingwood and Carlton fans, respectively), not so much. Melbourne (who I like as a central FL resident) had a good (5 goal / 30 point) win over St. Kilda, and are heavily favored in their next match against Carlton (sorry, RN).
Carlton continues to pay the price for their arrogance in the late 90s and early 2000s. Plus, turns out hiring a washed up supercoach was not a good plan.
Don’t forget the poor draft picks.
If it’s any consolation, a lot of US football fans can relate.
*Looks at Chicago Bears shirt, and nods sadly*
*Clears throat*
Cleveland.
*passes flask of bourbon to ease the pain*
At least we had three good sports teams last year, and got our first championship in a major sport in my lifetime.
*hands half-empty flask back to Swiss*
Both true, but it also happens even to teams that usually do well at it.
*sighs, gives robc the “eye cleaning middle-finger”*.
True. But, my understanding is a lot of that was due to the arrogance that they didn’t really need to scout draft picks.
I shouldn’t be talking crap. You’d know better than I, especially since (as JB and Chip said above), the 1990’s and 2000’s were blank decades for AFL in the US. You really had to search to find any info.
The good news is that it will eventually get better. The bad news is that it can take some time, as with the Red Sox (my baseball team), who went 86 years without a championship.
I don’t think you’re talking crap. I’ve been in the States since 1990 so I don’t know much of what went on in that decade. With more internet access, I’ve got a better handle on the 2000s. But a lot of what I know are drawn from fan blogs & podcasts. Carlton has always been perceived as a club of privileged directors. They didn’t do well handling expansion, recruiting, etc. But they absolutely blew it on draft picks as you said. Then its president made some terrible financial decisions AND they were caught cheating on the salary cap. Not only did the team suck, but they almost went out of business.
Between 1979 & 1999 (21 seasons), they won 5 premierships, played in 3 more grand finals, and missed the finals 6 times. Since then (17 seasons), they’ve made the finals 6 times total. It’s a systemic problem that the club has only recently decided to confront.
underperforming draft picks would be a better term. They were all fairly highly regarded at some point.
All these threads about rugby and no naked rugby player pics for me to fap to? At least some Ben Cohen skin.
I don’t really understand the sport…but…100000% better than baseball.
Things also better than baseball
It is not hard, when looking at some national pastimes, to see the genesis of their creation.
Hackey-sacking can be traced back to an isolated colony of retarded people who had nothing but a ball of yarn
Wow, that is a sick burn.
not a burn at all. i enjoy rugby, think baseball is somewhere between “Golf” and “a talk show”
Not even a high-brow talk show, like those ones Maury does when the lady gets to find out who the baby’s daddy is.
I don’t disagree, although I can usually sit through 4 innings or so.
But damn, I laughed so hard at what you were comparing it to.
oh. me too.
I have said before that any game that allows you to sit outdoors and drink beer and yell obscenities* is generally a good time.
(in this sense, superior to golf i suppose)
Baseball is fine at the park. You get to set out in the sun and drink beer. In college, we’d occasionally go to the Rangers games and set in the bleachers for five bucks. It was fun.
Baseball on TV, however? *snore*
Completely OT: But a big fuck you to all project managers who sit on their hands for a month, and wait until Noon on a Friday before they start asking questions about items that need to be completed by Monday.
Just tell them “Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.”
I’ve tried in the past… I got a talking from my boss because “We’re all on the same team.” There are reasons I’m looking for a new job.
Which is why I went off on my own. I got tired of that bull shit and the subsequent ‘we’re on the same side/team’ crap. They’d cut me anyway if they had to and suddenly I don’t think they’d appreciate if I’d say ‘but we’re on the same team!’
Fuck them.
There is no “I” in OBEY!
Stolen.
Something tells me Ozzie Rules can be found on youtube with little difficulty. Shit, I turned on the roku youtube channel last weekend and there was a live feed of a four hour GT3 race at the Nurburgring on. On the long course. I watched the final hour or so. Good stuff.
You can subscribe, relatively cheaply, to the AFL official online feed: https://www.watchafl.com.au/ (sign up page).
Here for TV: http://www.afl.com.au/tv-radio/international-broadcast-partners
AND
Here for more info: http://www.afana.com/drupal5/tvinfo
Hey, a big F-U to HM, and all the rest of you tempt me with links.
THIS IS THE SHIT THAT IS “RECOMMENDED” FOR ME
Nice try Jimbo, not going to click that shit.
Aren’t we all in this together? We’re a village, right?!
I am more like one of a roaming company of unpaid deserters that will come and steal shit from the village and march off.
At this point in time I’m ready to set up a separate account because every time I click HM’s links I get ‘memetastic’ content recommendations for a couple days.
Just you wait for this afternoon, if you want a fun browser history…
*Something something, narrow gays something something*
Am I doing this right? I don’t think I’m doing this right.
So now you’re fat shaming people? For shame.
I’m sorry. For balance, broad gays.
Fuck you for passing up the opportunity to make a Bruce Vilanch joke.
I cannot hide my shame, HM. You have schooled me once again, yet I will not learn.
I’m not sure what the problem is here.
I blame myself, in part. Your links sometimes have hot women, so I don’t want to miss out. OTOH, most don’t – I NEED MORE SELF-CONTROL.
Right-click -> Open in Private Browsing Window/Open in Incognito Mode
All the danger of clicking on a blind link with none of the downside. It’s like rawdogging a chick whose had a tubal ligation.
Thanks! My perversions are unchained! (I almost wrote unchanged – also a true statement)
It’ll come in handy for Fur Friday
😉
Christ. At least Yo Gabba Gabba kept this sort of thing to a minute or two.
Man, Cosby was planning his rapes at a very young age.
STEVE SMITH JEALOUS!
BILL COSBY IS STEVE SMITH ROLE MODEL!
STEVE SMITH NEED NO DRUGS TO PERFORM, HE ALL NATURAL!
“And he testified in 2005 that he had obtained Quaaludes to give to seduce young women.”
Giving a girl quaaludes is not seducing. Period.
Drugging would definitely be the accepted term on that one.
I’m just here to say that soccer fans are basically communists.
Mwah ha ha ha ha ha!
2 and 0, bitches!
Of course you are.