Crazy About Footy

Students at David Douglas take up one of Australia's top sports 

BY CLIFF PFENNING 
Issue date: 6/8/2001 The Tribune (copyright)

There are four kinds of football in Australia, but only one "footy." And it could mean any or all of the sports, depending on which part of the continent a fan looks for it. At David Douglas High School, footy is Australian Rules Football, a crazy game normally played on a cricket field with a rugby-like ball and white-hatted officials who wave flags whenever a team scores.

"It's what you grow up with if you live in Melbourne or Adelaide," says John Wood, an Adelaide teacher who is on an exchange program at David Douglas. "And you just call it 'footy.' " 

About two dozen students at David Douglas formed a club to learn and practice Aussie Rules Football. Wood is the instructor. After six weeks of practice, the club divided into two teams and played a couple of games. 

"It's a lot of fun, a great game to play," says senior Steve Stupey, captain of one of the teams. "It's challenging but easy to play. And it's all fun because we don't have formal practices." 

Stupey led the Adelaide Crows to a win over their rivals, the Port Adelaide Power, 62-41 in the first Aussie Rules exhibition at the school May 18. The teams played eight to a side, 10 fewer than in an Australian pro game, but the basic elements of play were present: The players ran, passed and kicked the ball; goals were scored; and flags were waved. 

"It was a lot harder than I thought it would be," senior Don Gilchrist says. "It takes a while to get used to running and kicking the ball." 

Wood served as the game official and as the coach of the Power. Wood's wife, Helen, coached the Crows. Most of the students paid $40 to buy a jersey, which came straight from Australia. The jerseys feature the team's main sponsors, Toyota for Adelaide, and Vodafone, a cell phone company, for Port Adelaide. 

John Wood, who is a Crows fan, thoroughly enjoyed organizing the club. "It was something to do to show the boys a bit of Australia. They picked it up pretty fast," says Wood, a physical education instructor. "

We picked up a lot of kids who weren't involved in other sports," Helen Wood says. "They all had a great time." 

Fast and bloody Aussie Rules Football is a faster version of rugby, where players run constantly and there is never a line of scrimmage. Wood says midfield players run close to 12 miles during an average game (four 20-minute quarters). 

Players score six points for kicking the ball through the middle of four posts and one point for kicks inside the outer two posts. 

Players regularly become bloody from all of the contact.  Aussie Rules Football is wildly popular in Melbourne, where most of the Australian Football League teams are based, but the sport has national appeal as well. The AFL Grand Final, played in September, is Australia's version of the Super Bowl. The sport is embracing the new generation of stadiums, too. Colonial Stadium, which features a retractable roof, opened in Melbourne last year. It is the home field for three teams.  The other kinds of football in Australia are Rugby Union, Rugby League (a faster version of Rugby Union, popular in Sydney) and soccer. Sports fans watch two versions of "The Footy Show," one focused on the AFL, the other on Rugby League. At David Douglas, footy is the Aussie Rules variety.

The David Douglas players often had trouble kicking the ball on the run during their exhibition, especially while an opposing player was chasing them. Players being tackled while kicking the ball are part of the visual majesty of the sport. 

The wide-open nature of the game appealed to the David Douglas players, as did the controlled contact. There's no padding allowed, so players don't hit nearly as hard as they would in a football game. 

"I could see playing this a lot," says Stupey, who played American football for one year. "It's a real workout, and it's just as fun as American football." 

Contact Cliff Pfenning at cpfenning @portlandtribune.com.

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