The footy crowd is abuzz today, with the Grand Final between Sydney Swans and Hawthorn taking place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG, or the ‘G’) this afternoon. Keen fans not able to attend in person will get together with friends and family to watch the match on the biggest screen they can find.

PHOTO:”Tom wills statue” by Rulesfan – Own work. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (Statue at the Melbourne Cricket Ground of Tom Wills umpiring a game of school or folk football in 1858)

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a grand final shindig. Beer and cheap casked-wine flowing freely, the air laden with the aroma of barbecued onions, sausages, and steak, competing with socially acceptable cigarette smoke and, sometimes, a hint of weed.

Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1864 Photo: Wikipedia, Public Domain

The best parties were when your own team wasn’t playing – you could sit back and just enjoy the process without any of that sick feeling of disappointment at the end of the day. You’ve already had that when your team either didn’t make the finals, or made the eight but got put out during the lead-up matches to the big day.

Since Grade six, I’d barracked for St Kilda. I dumped them a few years ago when I reached saturation point with the constant media reporting of the results of their ‘culture’ involving groupies.

In the early days, the ball changed from the round ball you see up there in that first photo, to the oval we have today. These drawings below are from 1891. I love those old outfits.  These days, the shorts are a more sensible size when I went to footy matches during the 70s and 80s. I guess they worked out those skin-tight little shorts were doing nothing for their future fatherhood potential.

By J Macfarlane [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

On of the most exciting parts of the Grand Final is the playing of our national anthem: except Meatloaf – what a let down that was, in 2011, from one of my favourites! Every year, at the end of the anthem there is an almighty roar from the crowd – absolutely everyone screams in anticipation! It is really something to be in the crowd for that.By Jimmy Harris from Melbourne, Australia (The teams line up for the 2005 national anthem) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons (Sydney Swans & West Coast Eagles)

 MCG Panorama. Taken at Richmond VS Carlton in an AFL Match from Wikpedia, public domain, released by author, candidate for Commons.

Closer to home, today is the last game of Fantasy Football we play this season. I finished up at Supercoach in the Home and Away games at 72,438 – in the top 29% – out of 250,278 fantasy footy coaches! Mr R probably finished in the top 1000 or less.  In the other one I played, in the AFL’s own competition, I finished at 301,101 31,101, but I have no idea of coach numbers.  I won’t talk about the draft games (where we had unique players within a league) as I didn’t win a single premiership.

I haven’t decided if I will watch the game yet.

I think I’d rather mess about on the computer, catching up on a couple of assignments. I have to record my scripted narration for my digital story. I also have to analyze a comic strip page – ha! that’ll be fun. A writing task, or maybe two, due Monday. Coursera are having random maintenance outages over the due time period, so I’m getting everything in early. I got behind with the Climate Change course, but a bit of effort saw me catch up and do the quiz and evaluations on time. I’m glad I’ve stuck with this course as I’m learning a lot about the global warming thing.

Well, people, I hope you are having a good weekend, whatever you are doing! ❤