Current location:	Bed
Current mood:	sick
Current music:	ABC radio commentary - Aus v Ind
Entry tags:	afl, international rules

Oh, I love my country. When our national sport (in the view of a Victorian) is not played by anyone else in the world, we find the closest realtive, change the rules a little and get a test series of Australia v Ireland in International Rules Football. What a manic, insane game it is. But thoroughly engaging.

I'd say it's virtually Gaelic football, played on the square pitch with a round ball with goalkeeper, with just a few AFL rules added in. For example when running with the ball you can either kick the ball to yourself (Gaelic) or bounce it (AFL). They've retained the AFL behind posts beside the Gaelic goal. All together there is 3 types of scoring: goal (into the net - 6), over (over the cross bar - 3) and behind (between the goal and behind posts - 1)

Though they are supposed to be playing the same game, there are obviously differences between the countries. If everyone was wearing the same shirt you'd be able to tell who was AFL and who was Gaelic just by their ground game. Especially when the ball was loose and the AFL boys would go in to grab the ball with their hands, rather than kicking it clear like the Irish. I had my eyes closed when that happened a few times. A few feet were getting very close to heads.

It was really exciting though. It seemed a quicker game than AFL, just for the smaller ground and shape of the ball I'd say. Not that AFL is slow by any means, there's a lot more ground to cover with a weird shaped ball.

Oh, Austrlia lost by the way. But it was pretty close, only 4 points in it.

And the ill mood is not due to the football, but from seediness I'm still feeling after quite a large one last night. *damns Jamesons to hell*