Melbourne

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Hi everyone, sorry, been a bit busy, so it's now Sunday morning and its raining. Friday evening was very exciting, we went to our first Australian football match (AFL) (Australian Football League) at the MCG and watched Richmond and Melbourne play. Not that I understood any of the rules and were none the wiser by the time it finished !! Completely confusing if you ask me ! Now I like to think of myself as sporty but I'm not really ! !! There seemed to be so many people on the field all at once, people carrying water bottles out to the players whilst game was happening and not leaving the field in a hurry, men in grey uniform carrying boxes and standing in the middle of the pitch at break time, have no idea what they were doing. Men in yellow uniform, but I think they were empires as they threw the ball backwards onto the pitch and they were doing a lot of flag waving at the goals. I did read up on it and it made more sense but it didn't seem like that when you were watching it and when it is shown on TV you don't see all these extra people running around on the pitch ! Besides the confusing rules, you were aloud to sit in you're chairs and drink glasses of wine, how nice was that and the fans from all the teams were not separated, finally, civilised people who can sit together and watch a sporty game without a punch up !!! Yes there were a few remarks shouted out from the crowd but not anything like footie at home. The stadium was amazing, apparently they use it for the cricket in the summer and footie in the winter, at this football match there were 58,000 people inside, it holds over 100,000. It was a great atmosphere and we throughly enjoyed it. The stadium is in Melbourne city and when there kare games on or anything else, the city is very organised and lay on extra trams and buses. They had a lot of military and serving personnel people in the crowd because it is Anzac weekend. At the beginning of the football match we were all given little finger lights to wear. They dimmed the pitch lights and thousands of tiny orange lights could be seen around the stadium, then a couple of soldiers on horses carrying a flame rode around the whole of the pitch, a chap with a bugle played 'the last post', it was very moving and there were soldiers lined up on the pitch with the players. Also they had a live rocky type band play before the game started, they too were wearing military uniform. It really was a very good evening considering I didn't have a clue about the game. There was a couple sat in front of us, she was wearing the Richmond colours, black and yellow and he was wearing the Melbourne colours, red and black, they both looked so happy but at the end of the game he was stood up because Melbourne won and she was seated ! Score was 83 and Richmond was 51. Even the scoring was complicated !!! The Richmond team were known as the 'Tigers' and Melbourne are known as 'the Demons' but I kept calling them the 'Devils' and that was annoying Stu !! Oh yes their team songs are very cheesy, Stu said they sounded like an american 30's stage show. We then left the stadium when it was over and went into the city which was busy and buzzing and had a drink and met one of Sue's and Brian's work colleagues, all in all it really was a very good night.

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