Live by the Code

There has been a lot of hullabaloo in the news lately regarding a couple of Rugby League players who are (shock! horror!) “defecting” to AFL. This is, apparently, so important that the commercial news programmes must dedicate serious air-time to the story every single night for several weeks running. The story also makes a noticeable appearance in the vast majority of newspapers. Just to put things into perspective, the fact that a major mining company has been accused of knowingly allowing its workers to be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation only warranted a one-sentence throw-away mention as part of the stock-market overview (to explain why the stocks have dropped so much).

That's Australia for you.

Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with antipodean sporting codes, AFL stands for “Australian Football League”, the highest level of competition in the game known as Australian Rules Football. The letter combination “AFL” is also used synonymously with the game itself, so that it is not uncommon for someone to say “I play AFL”, or “We have an AFL field” when what they really mean to say is “I play Australian Rules Football” or “We have a field for playing Australian Rules Football” - and neither the player nor the field will ever get close to the actual national league.

It's one of the many things about the Australian sporting culture I don't understand. The sport is also colloquially known as “Aussie Rules”, which makes more sense, is more accurate and takes exactly the same amount of syllables to say. Plus, it has the added bonus of nice continuant consonants between the syllables, so it's much easier to slur while drunk. Surely a necessity for any Australian sport?

Aussie Rules was developed in the state of Victoria over a hundred years ago as a way to keep cricket players fit during the off season. To this day, many people honestly believe Australia only has two seasons. Forget that whole Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn malarky, here we have Cricket (when it's hot and sunny) and Football (when it's cold and rainy)*. What exactly is meant by “Football” is a regional thing, as south of the Murray River “football” usually means Aussie Rules, while anywhere north of the Murrumbidgee River** is Rugby League*** country. Oh, yeah, there are a few AFL teams in New South Wales, and we're about to get a second one in Queensland, but quite frankly the north belongs to League. Well, except for the Northern Territory, which produces a heck of a lot of AFL players... Oh, whatever.

It has been said that Aussie Rules is a mixture between Soccer and Rubgy, but if you watch the game in action it looks a lot more like Team Handball with kicking. It is, quite frankly, an almost perfect sport. I will admit that I spent the majority of my life completely bamboozled by the thing, but then I read the rules (I bought a book full of rules for various games, and I'll be darned if it isn't surprisingly interesting), and suddenly it started to make sense. Once you understand why everyone stopped chasing the ball as soon as that guy caught it and started walking backwards, it's a corker of a thing to watch.

Certainly beats the pants off Rugby (League or Union). I can see why two NRL players at the top of their game and looking for a new challenge would want to switch codes to AFL. I'm sure the millions and millions of dollars they're being paid to switch don't hurt, either.

The only real problem with Aussie Rules is that it's too long. It's probably one of the few things the game still shares with cricket - along with the oval pitch. I love watching the second half of the game. It's a nice length of time, the players are already “broken in” and there's a whole “underdog” thing happening. It's absolutely brilliant watching what happens to a score-line that starts at 53-30 over the course of the last two quarters.

What they really need to do is drop the game by half an hour and replace the four quarters with two halves, like a Soccer match. I've often thought it might be fun to rejig the game to run for the same time and on the same pitch as a Soccer match and then try to take it to Europe. The fact that it's closer to Handball than Rugby should make it attractive enough. I'm not sure if it would really work on a rectangular pitch, though. A diamond, maybe...

Then again, maybe with the right sales-pitch people in Europe will just decide to take up both Aussie Rules and cricket, and create fields that work for both. After all, it's happening in China. I'm not entirely sure how or why, but apparently the Chinese folk just “get” it. We've got a couple of franchises in Hong Kong and other places.

If you wanted the proper rules of the game, you could always look it up on Wikipedia, although I found my Rules of the Game book is much more readable. The Wikipedia entry is a bit tough to get through.

To give you an idea, though:

• The game is played on an oval pitch with an oval ball (a different shape to rugby or grid-iron balls, and a bit bouncier).
  
• Games last for four quarters of 25 minutes each - there is a longish half time break dividing the game into two halves. (Personally, I think they should change to two 35 minute halves, but that's just me)
  
• The goal areas consist of four posts at each end of the field. If you get the ball through the middle posts without touching them, it's a “goal” and you score six points, if you get it through the outside posts, or the ball touches the middle posts on the way through, it's a “behind” and you score one point.
  
• Tackling is allowed, but with conditions on what parts of the body or clothes can be held.
  
• There is no off-side rule and no goal keeper, and players can wonder around the field as they see fit (although they tend to stick to the areas where they can do most good).
  
• If you are running with the ball you have to bounce it or touch it to the ground at least once every ten meters.
  
• You can't pass or throw the ball, but must either handball it (punch it with the side of your fist) or kick it to other players
  
• If tackled, you have to get rid of the ball as soon as possible - preferably by handballing or kicking it. If you don't, various things may happen depending on why you still have the ball (look up the proper rules). Most commonly, the referee will take it and bounce it as high off the ground as he/she can (balls up)
  
• If you catch the ball and successfully hold onto it after it has travelled ten or more meters without touching the ground or another player, it's called a “Mark”. The “marked man” can take an unhindered kick from anywhere behind where he took the mark (which is why you see players catch the ball and start walking backwards - and why no one tries to stop them).
  
• If the ball goes out of bounds one of the umpires has to throw it back towards the centre of the pitch by throwing it backwards over his head.

There are other rules as well, governing things like who gets a free kick for what and when players are sent off or substituted, but you can look them up if you really care. The above list is enough of a guide to help the game make sense if you watch it for the first time. It's quite a good game to watch. I'm not a huge fan of sport, but I like this one. It's just just so well designed for spectators.


* Except in the Tropics, when the Cricket Season is hot and stormy and the Football Season is cold and sunny.

** It's a long standing tradition in Australia to orient yourself according to rivers - especially in the rural areas, where most of the Shires were named after the rivers that ran through them.

*** Yes, Australians call Rugby “football”. I don't know why. I also don't know why we don't call Football “football”. I think we're a little bit daft, quite frankly.