Pics of your country, city...

[Ben.Daly]

Originally Posted by CleverCowboy

I had completely missed your post here. It was the day I left on vacation for a week.

I am familiar with AFL, but not enough to know the rules of the game. I have seen some video highlights like the one you posted out of curiosity. My first impression was that you must be ready, willing and able to sacrifice your body for that ball! No protective gear. Just like people who watch NASCAR races for the possibility of an impressive car crash, the crowd watching the AFL matches are waiting for the next crash of bodies.

One thing that is obvious of the players is that unlike American football players, it looks advantageous to be quick and lean with the ability to jump well.

The stamina of the players is incredible. It's a bit unfortunate that we're the only country who plays it, if it were as popular world wide as some other sports who knows what the best athletes from around the globe could accomplish

It's a very hard sport to play casually though. People generally just enjoy kicking the ball to back and forth to each other, maybe shooting at goals, getting a game organised is usually too impractical.

One popular mini-game people play is called 'Markers up', basically one person kicks the ball into a group of people who try and be the one to catch (mark) it. If you catch it on the full you become the person kicking it into the group, pretty simple game. It's fun trying to predict where the ball will be kicked and running towards it, or grappling with other participants to catch it, the taller people playing generally do quite well for obvious reasons, but even for someone on the shorter side like myself it's still fun to play. Maybe there's an American equivalent of the game with an NFL ball?