Friday 11 March 2016

I went to Brumbies rugby. Naturally I blogged about it.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in ancient 1996, people in the Southern Hemisphere decided that there just weren't enough gladiatorial sporting competitions involving balls so a new one absolutely needed to be created forthwith. Thus, the dawn of the Super Rugby.

There were originally 12 teams involved in this new rugby ball tournament and thus it was aptly named the Super 12. And then more teams wanted to play with the balls so it became Super 14

And then some smart minds decided this was a bit silly, wasn't it, so best call it Super Rugby, which means 18 billion more teams could participate if they wanted to with no name change required. There's a lesson in there for everyone.

Watching rugby union is my new shiny thing. Who knew it was so entertaining.  Here's how it goes: there are two teams, and one wins. The other loses. 

There are no encouragement awards for the losers. They just have to get back on the horse and give it their best shot the next week. Because that's how life works. Sometimes you win; sometimes you don't.

Speaking of horses, my local rugby union team is called the ACT Brumbies. A brumby is a free roaming feral horse that roams the Australian alps. With that in mind, the ACT Brumbies are remarkably good at ball control and passing in general with all those hooves getting in the way.

I understand about 3.7% of the rules of rugby union, but I appreciate that my home city is very good at it. For example, I've been to two games and they have won all of them. I have heard a vicious rumour that they don't always win every game, but I call that out as conjecture until I see this loss situation take place.

I have worked out that the aim of the game is to get a ball from one end of a field to the other while grunting and piling of top of each other. The rules of the game seem very complicated but I guess I will begrudgingly learn them because they seem important to the fans who yell about them loudly and endlessly to no-one in particular.

Things I noted:
  • My heightened awareness of my condition - of being unremarkable and ordinary.  No-one expresses such approval of being entertained when I send an email at my work in the Australian Public Service. No-one wears a business shirt with my name on the back of it. There's no-one on the sidelines yelling at me to send the email straighter, you goose.
  • The brumbies running around the paddock are built like double-brick stables constructed to withstand a herd of marauding wildebeest. Next time I need to lift my jumbo jet and store it in the overhead aircraft hangar I'm calling the ACT Brumbies.
  • Abs City (see above).
  • It doesn't matter if you don't know the rules of rugby.  As long as you show your support for the home team through fist pumping and random heckling of the opposition players, occasionally your own players, the referees, the team doctors, the ball kids, the TV camera guy, the guy who carries the camera guy's cord, the guy who carries the camera guy's microphone or the guy who rides a quad bike out to deliver a little sand castle for freekicks (which is never not hilarious), you are accepted and acceptable.
  • Never, ever look at the bright paddock lights above you to see how bright they are. They are brighter than the sun (if you are from England, see picture. This is the sun).
  • I thought there would be many interesting and varied peoples who would attend rugby union matches but, on the whole, they were well civilised and not one soul tried to pick a fight with me, probably because they have jobs and aren't on parole like football fans from other codes.  It's also possibly because I'm just like a scary bikie, except without the muscles, anti-social behaviour, sleeve tatts, criminal rap sheet, harley or drug dealing ways.  I did give two panadol to a colleague the other day, but she swore she had a headache so I was just administering some light first aid.
  • The hot chips from the catering are strangely delicious. Life continues to smack me in the mouth with it's darn surprises.

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