Country Footy

This is Erik’s third season of playing Australian Rules Football. For the past two seasons, Erik has played at a local club where I was working as a sports trainer. He started the season with that club again this year, however, he was not getting as much playing time as he would have liked. He was attending two training sessions per week and seemed to be playing quite well, but the coach must have thought otherwise.

While Erik was getting limited playing time, my co-workers were always in my ear about the possibility of Erik playing footy with them. The thing is, they play country footy just outside of Ballarat, so it’s not just around the corner if you know what I mean! Regardless, Erik decided to give it a go and went to training with them one night a few weeks ago. The rest, I suppose, is history, and Erik is now a Newlyn Cat. He and my co-workers and a few other guys who live in Melbourne drive to Newlyn on Thursday nights for training. They leave around 4:30 and get back at 10pm after they’ve eaten dinner with the club (the dinner thing is not just a country footy thing, all clubs have a team dinner on Thursday night after training). For the last two Saturdays I have driven with Erik to the games to keep him company and to watch him play with his new team. Fortunately I already know a few of the guys on the team (my co-workers!), so that always makes the games a bit more fun to watch.

Erik's first country footy game, played in a town called Waubra.

Erik is spending time as a "ruckman". Here he is going up in the "ruck" (like a "jump ball" in basketball), which as you see can be quite physical. The difference between this and basketball is that it happens many times per game, after every goal and when the ball goes out of bounds.

Country footy is a bit different than what we have been exposed to so far in regards to Aussie Rules Football. The most noticeable changes are at the games themselves. Firstly, we had to pay to get in! $10 per person is charged at the gate, even for players. We have never had to pay to get in to any of Erik’s games before, so this was a bit of a surprise to us. After the money has been paid, each driver tries to get a parking spot around the oval so that he/she can sit in the car to watch the game. I've learned that this comes in handy when it starts to rain! Whenever a team scores a goal, a chorus of car horns is heard "tooting" (honking) in support of the team.

Front row seats!

Watching from the car is nice when the weather turns bad!

In addition, country football teams are linked to netball teams. What is netball, you ask? It is a little bit like basketball, but you cannot dribble the ball and there is no backboard on the basket. The girls wear dresses and they play outside in winter, right alongside the football game.

The letters on the dresses signify positions on the court.

Note the strange-looking basket. Netball has limited contact compared to basketball.

Most country footy teams seem to be literally in the middle of nowhere. There are fields and farms along a country road and then all of the sudden there is a footy field where there are a hundred or so people watching the game, most from the warmth of their cars.

A wind farm in Waubra. Fortunately the turbines were still that day!

The culture of country footy is definitely a bit more unique than that of the footy played in Melbourne, and thanks to my co-workers, Erik and I will be enjoying the quirks of country footy for the next few months.

Newlyn's home ground. Not a bad spot to be on a nice winter day.

Lawn Bowls

A few weeks ago, when the weather was a bit warmer and our days were a little bit longer, we had our first "go" at lawn bowls. To me, lawn bowls seem like a combination of bocce ball, shuffleboard, and actual bowling. Typically, you will find older Aussie gentleman (and women, but more often men) out at the local bowling club, and they are usually wearing tracksuits that look like they might have been made in the 90's. Pretty much every Australian town seems to have a place for lawn bowls.

Lawn bowl leagues can be quite serious, or it can be a fun activity for a buck's day (bachelor party), hen's do (bachelorette party), a birthday party, fund raiser, or any social gathering. During these non-league lawn bowls, the bowling is generally done barefoot, so the game is often referred to as "barefoot bowls". One of our friends organized barefoot bowls for his birthday, so obviously we were keen to try this new sport!

We played our barefoot bowls at the Port Melbourne Bowling Club, which, according to the sign below, was established in 1883!

This lovely older gentleman (I wish I could remember his name!) was quite serious about teaching us the basics, and once our short briefing was finished, we were free to play for a few hours.

It is my understanding that barefoot bowls rarely take place without the consumption of a few drinks, so of course we were compliant with that during the course of the day! Similar to bocce, the goal is to roll the ball as close as you can to the small white/yellow ball (the "jack" or the "kitty") at the end of the course. The "bowl" (ball) that ends up closest is the winner. Like shuffleboard, if you roll the ball too hard, it will fall off the end of course and you will not have a chance to be closest to the jack. The ball is actually not completely round like a bowling ball, as it has an "edge" that travels along the grass. Bowling is done in a sweeping sort of motion and there is a gentle curve of the ball due to it not being completely round.

We got a few early pointers from a man with experience!

Erik's first bowl looks pretty good!

Birthday boy!

Switching ends of the course

I was bowling entirely too hard during our first few games, and my ball was always going off the course. I was treating lawn bowls too much like duckpin bowling, and rolling with a lot of force. However, after I learned to take a little bit off of each roll, I improved and was quite happy with my performance. This was to the dismay of Erik, since in the first few games we were playing as partners, but by the time I had improved we were playing boys versus girls and I was winning some points!

Please note the man in the pink dress in the background. That is a buck's party!

Barefoot bowls was a great way spend a beautiful Autumn day, and I would definitely be up for playing again in the future!

Professional Life

Over the last few months, I have occasionally mentioned my "new" job, but I thought I would expand on what I am actually doing for work and how I got to that point. If you have been reading the blog for a while, you might remember that I struggled A LOT to find work when we arrived in Oz. I applied for numerous teaching roles without even getting interviews, though it turns out now that I realize my applications were incomplete, because here in Australia instead of just sending a cover letter and resume, you are expected to respond to something called "selection criteria", which I did not do! Slowly I started piecing together work here and there in various different roles. During our first 2 years here, I taught the "Sports Trainer" course for Sports Medicine Australia, worked as a Sports Trainer for a local footy team (which I am still doing now), taught a few courses at the Australian College of Sports Therapy, worked as a lab instructor/tutorial teacher for Human Physiology at the university where Erik works, and finally worked as a CRT (causal relief teacher - substitute teacher) for physical education and other subjects at a variety of schools. I was appreciative of the work, but I was yearning for a permanent role so that I could really "settle in" to this country professionally. 

My goal all along was to get a job at the Sports Academy that happens to be very close to where we live. I had done some temporary work there last school year and found that it was the closest thing to my job "at home". To briefly explain, in Australian schools, there are no sport programs like they exist in America. In the States, I worked as a certified athletic trainer, caring for injured athletes at various levels but predominantly high school-aged kids. I also taught Sports Medicine and a few other classes, as I have teaching certification in addition to my athletic training certification. Athletic trainers cannot practice in Australia. The profession does not exist here, and the closest profession to it is Physiotherapy, which I would be required to go back to school for, a 3 year process. No thanks, I'll stick with the 7 years of education that I already have! Anyway, this academy where I wanted to work actually has school-based strength and conditioning and some school-based sport, making it an ideal location for me to use my skills and knowledge!

Professionally, I have always put an emphasis on networking, but having moved abroad and looked for jobs here, I now realize how ridiculously important it is to "know" the right people. I ended up getting an "in" at the Sports Academy thanks to a former UNC soccer player who I worked with about 10 years ago. The High Performance Manager (Head of Strength and Conditioning) at the time put me to work (just based on my soccer player raving about me!) and also made sure that I was the preferred substitute for PE at the school. This was great, but I was still getting thrown in to different classes every day (and often it was not teaching PE, but Italian or Wood Tech or Science). Towards the end of last school year, I applied for a role there (within the Sports Academy, not the school...I will explain in the next paragraph) for the new school year. I was able to convince the Head of Sport to hire me, however, it was only 3 days a week. I had hoped for full time but I took what I could get and tried to make the most of it. I started that role at the end of January, and continued to teach Human Physiology at the uni one day per week, just leaving me with Fridays off (which was not a bad gig, actually!!). Around May, another staff member wanted to drop down in time fraction, so I was offered the chance to go full time and I jumped at the opportunity! Though my contract is over at the end of the school year, I am optimistic that I will be hired for next school year, as I have really fit in well with the current staff and students.

This Sports Academy is unique in Australia. It is essentially a government-funded sports school that has just finished being built this year. It is within a secondary school (years 7-12 in Australia) with a total school population of about 1200 students, 500 of which are within the Sports Academy. Students who are at the school for sport take their classes within the regular school, but then they have special classes in their day called ADP (Athlete Development Program). Years 7/8 have 3- 45 minute periods of ADP per week and Years 9/10 have between 5 and 10 ADP periods per week. Years 11 and 12 are a bit different because they have a tougher academic timetable and they might be coming in before or after school to complete workouts. During ADP, students undertake a physical preparation program where they learn and perform basic lifting techniques, Olympic lifts, and maintenance exercises designed to prevent injury. My role within this Sports Academy is as a Rehabilitation Coordinator, primarily for athletes in grades 7 and 9. Every morning, physiotherapists from a local clinic visit our school for an hour. We schedule 5 minute time slots during that hour, so students who are injured can book in to see the physio, either for a new injury or for a review of an old injury. The physios do not perform treatment or rehabilitation during that time, they only make a diagnosis. After athletes have a diagnosis, they (hopefully) come to see me for rehabilitation exercises, and I progress them as tolerated. In addition, I might have to modify what they are doing in ADP because of their injury. There is also A  LOT of documentation and paperwork involved in the job. We use a computer program to keep track of the injuries, though it is hard for us to track things like time lost due to injury because unfortunately most of the injuries we see actually occur in the sports played outside of school.

The "physio" room"

Hot and cold tubs (or "spas" as they call them here!)

There are advantages and disadvantages of my current role compared to my previous employment as an athletic trainer/teacher in the USA. Here, I don't have to stay until 11pm covering a high school football game, which is obviously an advantage! However, I do miss the acute injury evaluation part of my job, which is why I have remained working for the local footy club on the weekends. Because so many of our students play sport outside of school (since most Australian sport is club-based), we have little control over what they are doing, which can be frustrating. I realize that this can also happen at high schools in the US (and it did happen to me a few times), but more often than not, injuries I was caring for occurred on-site at my school during a practice or game. Ironically, rehab is something that I struggled to do in my US high school athletic training rooms because it was often pushed to the side due to athletes needing to be taped before practice or needing to get to practice at a certain time. I have always believed that rehab is a crucial part (arguably the most important part) of injury management, but I haven't always had the time and/or resources to implement rehabilitation programs like I am able to do in my current role.

It took nearly 2 years for me to settle into ONE job that I love, but it was well worth the wait. Even though I cannot "work" as an athletic trainer, I feel fortunate to be able to use most of my knowledge and experience in my current role. I even get the occasional chance to teach different year levels about things like injury management, which brings back memories of teaching Sports Medicine classes in the US. I always thought (and stated!) that I could do any type of job and be happy, but after months of working at jobs that were only slightly satisfying professionally, I have realized that I have a passion for my work and I NEED to be doing something in my field in order to be happy. After all, going to work every day to a job that you enjoy is not really "work" at all, is it?!

Finals

Faithful readers be forewarned, I am going to do a bit of bragging about the hubby in this post! If you have been reading the blog for a while, you'll know that Erik started playing footy (Australian Rules Football) around March of this year. During my interview to work as a sports trainer for the team, the coach saw Erik running a workout and asked if he'd like to give footy a try. Throughout the season, he played with the reserves, or "2's", the guys who are not quite good enough or physically fit enough to play with the "1's". The 1's, or seniors, get paid to play every week, and some of them have contracts paying them a bit more than other guys on the team.

A few weeks ago, in our last round of the regular season, Erik got the "call up" to play with the senior team. I think in a way it was a reward for showing up to training consistently (that is a problem among both teams), and also for being one of the more fit guys on the team. He can certainly run with the 1's, but his football knowledge and skills are far from perfect. However, during his senior debut, he proved that he could play at a higher level when surrounded by more sophisticated teammates. It needs to be noted, though, that this team we were playing against was the worst in the league. They lost every game, and often lost most by more than 100 points, so while Erik playing was an achievement, it wasn't exactly as if he had been asked to play in an important game.

Fast forward a week to the first round of finals (playoffs), and Erik made the roster for the 1's first finals game. There were a few injuries and a couple of players who were unavailable, and he proved himself enough in the prior week to give the coaches confidence to use him in a game that really mattered. We were the 3 seed in that game and ended up beating the 4 seed, as expected, to make it on to the next round of finals. Erik was able to contribute, and, according to the coach, may have been the sole reason that 2 goals were not scored in that game (we won by 11 points, a goal is worth 6).

Team selection is held on Thursday of every week, immediately after the training session. To be honest, I wasn't sure that Erik would make the side this week, as we had players coming back from injury and now we were the 3 seed trying to beat the 2 seed. However, he ended up making the team as player number 22 (18 players start and 4 substitutes are allowed for the entire game). Unfortunately we had a very serious injury to one of our players in the first 15 minutes of the game, requiring him to be taken to the hospital via ambulance. In addition, we had a player with a muscle strain who was not 100% and ended up not being able to play much at all. These two circumstances, along with the fact that we were playing on a rather large ground (not all footy fields are the same size), meant Erik got quite a bit of playing time, and again he was able to make an impact by tackling, shepherding (essentially blocking), and running all over the field. What is even more awesome is that we WON!! This is a team that only won 2 games last year, and now we are headed into the Grand Final game next Saturday. For Erik though, there is not a happy ending to this story. He has to fly to Perth next weekend for a work conference and will miss the chance to play in the Grand Final. Even worse, the course he has to take is about something that he is already proficient in doing, but because he has never used the equipment in Australia (mind you it is the SAME equipment as in the USA!), he has to complete this certification in order to proceed with his research. And after all, the reason we are living in Oz is because of his job... footy is just an added bonus. I, however, will be on the sidelines, and the coach has said that when we win, I will accept the medal on behalf of Erik. Pretty cool stuff.

Unlike college fight songs that are played throughout sporting events in America, the footy team's song is only sung if they end up as victors. Below is this week's rendition. The video quality is not great because for some reason blogger will not let me upload the good version from my phone. Can you understand any of the lyrics?!

Skinny Jeans

Last night, we attended a "reverse raffle" at our local footy club. I believe there were about 250 tickets to begin with, and tickets were drawn out until there were just two remaining tickets. The winner (not either of us, unfortunately!), walked away with $2500. There were also small prizes for the first ticket and second to last ticket drawn. Purchasing a raffle ticket also entitled the buyer to food and beer/wine for the duration of the raffle event, which lasted about three hours. In addition, it's always fun to hang out with guys from the footy club in a social setting.

Obviously Australia's culture is heavily influenced by the Europeans, so I suppose that is where the skinny jean trend comes from. I feel like it's much less common in the States to see guys wearing tight jeans and pointy shoes, but here is seems to be the norm. In addition, many of the hairstyles have an "unkept" look, but they require some sort of hair product to look that way.

This is "Derm", short for Dermott. He wins the award for tightest jeans of the night. I confirmed with him that it was hard work to get into those jeans!! Thanks for posing for the picture, Derm!

A blurry close up of the skinny jeans!

Of course, not every Aussie guy wears tight jeans and has gel in his hair, and Erik certainly won't be sporting that look anytime soon, though at times his curls might benefit from some gel to "tame" the mane. One of the trends for women is to wear dresses with tights or leggings underneath, and I think I might be the only female in Australia that does not own a pair of tall black boots!

Despite the fashion choices that we may not be used to, these Aussies, and in particular this footy club, have been very welcoming to Erik and I, and we have really enjoyed being a part of the club throughout the season. Our "finals" (equivalent to playoffs in America) begin next week, and we are "in", which is exciting! In the AFL, finals are just around the corner too, so people in Australia, and particularly in Melbourne, are passionately cheering their teams on in the last few rounds with hopes that they will make it into finals.

This guy won "best on ground" in the match yesterday! :)

Saturday Routine

Local footy season is now into Round 7, so for the last 7 Saturdays, with the exception of the one that we were in Brisbane, Erik and I have been spending most of the day watching and/or playing footy. As I mentioned at the beginning of the season, Erik plays for the "2's", or reserves, which is the first "adult" game played on Saturday. There is an under 18's game that is played before the 2's game, which I will have the pleasure of working in a few weeks when the "head" sports trainer is away on vacation. His game starts at noon and he has to be there by about 10:45am. I need to be there about 11:45am, but since we only have one car, if the game is away, I go a bit early with Erik and bring things to do for an hour before I start working. The home field is about a 20 minute bike ride for E, so for home matches he rides his bike and lets me have the car.

I work as the sports trainer for the first half of Erik's game while the head sports trainer takes a lunch break, since she has been there working since about 8:30am. Around half time, I go into the locker room to help her get the 1's ready. This involves mostly taping and massage. The Aussies love their massage. In the States we would typically use a heat pack, stretching, and perhaps a warm up on the bike to loosen up muscles, but here it's all about massage. It is something that has been hard to get used to, especially because some of the players think massage is a "cure" for injuries, while what they really need to be doing is stretching and rehab on a regular basis. As I've gradually gained more respect with the club, I have been making the guys aware of these things and a few are starting to listen, I think.

Around 2pm, Erik's game finishes and the 1's warm up for a few minutes before their game begins at 2:15. The game lasts about 2.5 hours (4 - 25 minute quarters with breaks at quarter time and half time), and during the game I'm often running on the field for injuries or taking care of players on the sidelines. One thing that has been extremely difficult for me to get used to is that sports trainers are able to run on the field while the game is being played. The second a player goes down, someone is yelling for the "trainers" to get on the field. Yes, sometimes those athletes are legitimately hurt and need to be carried off of the field, but often they just need a minute to "walk it off". I've spent a lot of my career "learning" to determine whether or not I need to go on the field for athletes when they go down, and now I am told to run out immediately, regardless of how bad the injury is. I do think it's a bit overkill and I tend to gingerly run out to an athlete who I think is going to be okay, while most of the sports trainers in our league are sprinting out to those athletes right away.

After the game I help players with ice and give advice to injured players about what they should do during the week. Every week we always have several injuries, and every week I tend to be shocked at just how many people get hurt. I can count SO many games that I've worked as an athletic trainer in the States when no one got hurt. In 7 rounds of footy, there have been multiple injuries in every game! Two weeks ago we had 2 shoulder subluxations and one dislocation, a high ankle sprain, a hamstring strain, and a hip pointer, along with a few other "minor" injuries. This week it was an eyelid laceration, an AC joint sprain, and a severe quad contusion. The number of injuries actually plays a huge role in footy because you only start the game with 4 substitutes, so if 2 are out due to injury, you are left with only 2 subs for the rest of the game. We have had several games this season where 4 players were injured, leaving us with no substitutes. Needless to say, that causes the guys to get "puffed"!

Erik usually stays to watch the 1's game, and after the game, players from both teams are encouraged to stick around the clubhouse to drink beer, eat food, and watch MORE footy on the telly (Aussie-speak for television). The coach gives out awards to the best player from each team (the best player from the opposing team gets a 6 pack of beer!), and sometimes there is free food for players and staff. Even after away games, guys will go back to the home clubhouse to hang out and have a beer. It's a good time to get to know the players, and I certainly am enjoying the friendships that Erik and I are forming due to being part of the footy club. One of those players was nice enough to offer to take pictures of Erik when he noticed that I had brought our camera, knowing that it was hard for me to try to "work" and photograph the hubby at the same time.

The black electrical tape on E's arm is in memory of 2 people close to the team who passed away this week. This seems to be done in all levels of footy. Before the game, each player does this, and sadly we seem to be doing it nearly every week this season!

Benefit of your wife being a sports trainer - she brings you her water bottle to drink out of at quarter time!

Erik getting a "mark", or a catch. "Marks" are a statistic kept throughout the game.

Using those tailback skills to dodge the opposing team.

Kicking the footy, a skill that has been hard for Erik to learn (the footy is shaped differently than an American football and is meant to be kicked end over end - not in a spiral), but one that he has really improved upon, according to his coaches and teammates. 

Erik in a "contest" for the ball. I know E hates wearing the mouth-guard and a lot of guys do not wear them, but I strongly encourage him to so and fortunately he obliges.

Round 1

The district level footy season lasts about 20 weeks, each week defined as a "round". Last weekend was the first round of play for the team that I am working with and the team that Erik is playing for. I wasn't really sure what to expect in terms of how many people would be there to watch and how the day would go, but I did know that there was a special "guest player" playing with our team in order to try to attract a large crowd on opening day. Anthony Koutoufides, affectionately known as "Kouta" by the locals, played for our side (teams are referred to as "sides" here) last week to the tune of what I'm guessing was a couple thousand dollars in his pocket for one game.

Kouta getting ready to play with the Moonee Valley FC

Kouta used to play in the AFL (equivalent of the NFL if we were taking American football and not footy), and had great success during his career, including being a few votes shy of winning the Brownlow Medal (the MVP of the league, essentially) in 2000. In totally non-footy related news, he won Australia's Dancing with the Stars in 2006! One of the guys on our team who follows the NFL first compared him to Tom Brady, but then decided he was more like an Eli Manning, not having quite the stature of Tom and his Under Armour and Stetson cologne ads, though Kouta did advertisements for both Nike and Adidas in the 90's. Either way, he's a big deal and LOTS of people came out to watch him play, which created a really fun and exciting atmosphere. Both teams (the senior team, or the 1's, and the reserve team, known as the 2's) beat the opponent by over 100 points, a big turn around from last year when apparently both teams lost to that same opponent by a combined 300+ points. Perhaps we should have tried to get Kouta for Round 2 as well, because we got flogged (commonly used Aussie word when a team loses badly of which the definition is: to beat harshly) in yesterday's game. Both teams lost by over 100 points, so the shoe was on the other foot, as they say. Apparently the team we played yesterday will be a top 5 team in the league (out of 14 teams), so there is no need to get discouraged yet. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before or not, but the team I am working with won only 2 games last season, so I am certainly hoping for a better season this year!

Unfortunately I didn't capture the spectacularness of this rainbow, which was completely full and extremely bright over the CBD after a big storm came through this afternoon. Here is what remained of the rainbow when I left the gym.

I thought I'd share a few funny terminology things with you that come up with the footy guys. I often ask them how things went in practice. They are constantly correcting me because they call it training, not practice. Their shoes are not cleats (they have NO IDEA what cleats are), they are boots. In fact, Erik mentioned to the other sports trainer (my official term when working with this team) that he needed a band-aid because his cleats were rubbing, she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Game jerseys are not called jerseys but jumpers. We aren't exactly sure how that works because a jacket is also a jumper. A bruise or contusion (like when you get kneed in the thigh) is called a corky. In training, when they put on pennies (the different colored mesh things so that you know who is on each team), those are called bibs. Before the regular season started, we had 3 practice matches, not scrimmages (they had no clue what a scrimmage was). And I'm not taping their ankles, I'm strapping them. :)

Another amazing autumn sunset captured thanks to the iPhone.

In terms of life in general, I was back to work last week after two weeks off due to school holidays. School is year-round here and that was the first break, separating term 1 from term 2. I was fortunate to be called to work at the sports school right across the street from where we live, so it was a nice ease back into working in a place that I am familiar with already. Week 2 of the second term starts tomorrow, but it's a bit of an easier week because Wednesday is a public holiday for ANZAC Day, a day that marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the first World War. It will be nice to work for 2 days, have a day off, then work for 2 more days before another weekend rolls around!

I thought this cloud made it look like there had been an explosion over our 'hood!

Full-on Footy

The term "full-on" is often used by Aussies to describe something that is intense, complete, or busy. They might describe a crazy night of partying, a hard workout, a difficult class assignment, or even a holiday as being "full-on". Right now, the Australian Football League season has just gotten underway, and I would describe the first weekend (also known as Round 1), as full-on. The first game was Thursday night, and I'd guess that most of the state of Victoria was tuned in to watch at least a bit of the game. Games continued on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and with each game seemingly came excitement surrounding the beginning of a new season. Because we arrived towards the end of the Footy season last year, we didn't totally immerse ourselves into the footy culture. We did watch the Grand Final (like the Super Bowl), but we did not own a television for the first few months of our time here, so it was not easy to watch the games.

Two players in "the ruck". This is similar to a jump ball in basketball. A ruckman is usually one of the taller guys on the team and he generally has sensational vertical jump height!

We got in on some of the Round 1 action today, as we headed to a game with a few friends. At this point we haven't completely decided who we are going to cheer for during our time in Oz. A common question that is asked this time of year is "who do you barrack for?", meaning "which team to you support?". I'm leaning towards the Essendon Bombers, because we lived in Essendon for a few weeks when we first arrived. I'm also a bit partial to Geelong, because they won the first footy game we attended even though they were the underdogs. We learned their victory song right away that night (yes, every team has a victory song), and it stuck with us for the last few weeks of the season. Geelong won the Grand Final last year, and they certainly aren't lacking supporters, so that might help me make my decision of which team to support! Today's game was a team from Perth (the largest city in Western Australia) versus a team from Footscray, which is actually where Erik's work is located.

The game requires an aerobic capacity similar to soccer, but with the addition of a physical component of tackling like American football (commonly called gridiron by the Aussies!) or rugby.

We were cheering for the team from Footscray today, but unfortunately they ended up on the losing side of the match. Regardless, it was fun to watch the game live and it was a beautiful fall day to be outdoors watching a sporting event at yet another stadium in Melbourne.

Our first sporting event at Etihad stadium. Lots of red, white, and blue from the Footscray supporters.

In addition to the AFL (which would be comparable to the NFL if we were talking "gridiron"), there are "feeder" leagues of footy. Then there are also district level footy leagues across various regions of Melbourne and presumably throughout Australia. Let me introduce you to a few of the guys who are on our footy team!

That is their promotional video for the 2012 season. Some of the guys get paid to play for the team, though I think what they make is generally equivalent to gas money for the week or money for beers and dinner on the weekend after games. We've had 3 practice matches and the regular season starts in 2 weeks, just after the Easter holiday. The team is coming off of a really bad season, but they have made some changes and they seem optimistic that this year will be better. They certainly keep me busy with lots of injuries and I'm enjoying getting to know the guys on the team. It's nice that Erik is playing as well, because it's something we can enjoy together. Impressively, Erik actually scored his first goal (worth 6 points) this weekend, in only his second game of footy!

We also continued our search for delicious Mexican food this weekend, as we met friends for dinner at a Latin American restaurant, Los Latinos, that happens to be a short walk from our house. The prices were very reasonable and the food was quite good. Erik and I split a delicious Chilean appetizer called "arepas de mascora", or seared yellow corn cakes topped with melted cheese, grilled chorizo, and sour cream. I was a bit disappointed that they did not serve margaritas on the rocks, but they did have a great selection of yummy frozen margaritas, so I indulged in a mango flavored drink. I also saved room for dessert, and the tres leches cake topped with whipped cream and berries was amazing! I'm hopeful that we'll make a trip back there when we start to crave Mexican-flavored food, which seems to happen quite often in this house. :)

Taaaaaaaar

Heeeeeeeeeeeels!

A lot of people have asked me when/how/if we watch U.S. sporting events while living abroad. The simple answer is "yes", that we are able to watch a few games here and there, but the timing of broadcasts are not always ideal since there is a 16 hour time difference between Melbourne time and Eastern Standard Time. During the Fall months (Fall in the Northern hemisphere), we were able to watch college football games on Sunday mornings, and since I wasn't working, I was able to watch NFL games on Monday mornings. All of this watching was done online, some live, and some on recorded broadcast that is available after the games are over. The free TV over here is actually pretty good, and they do show select NFL games every week, but we did not have a television for the first few months so we were doing all of our watching through the computer.

When the Winter months rolled around, we discovered that college basketball was a bit harder to watch based on the variety of game dates and times. However, we've been able to watch a few Carolina games this season, particularly the ACC match-ups. For the Tar Heel's first match up against the Dookies, I watched the heartbreaking loss live on a Monday morning since I was still unemployed. I then had to hide any emotion from Erik so that he would not know the result when he watched it after returning home from work on Monday evening. I watched the ending twice and that made the loss twice as heartbreaking! This time around, however, the game was on Saturday night at 7pm, which is 11am on Sunday for us. We actually had plans to meet some friends for brunch, so we stayed away from the internet and any type of social media until the game was over and started watching the game basically right after it ended in Durham. The beauty is that here we don't get any texts on our phones or score alerts on the television to let us know the end result. In fact, if we were to stay away from Facebook or ESPN for a few days, we still wouldn't see the result and could watch the re-recorded game a few days later. I really prefer to watch games live (I like to know that it's happening at the moment we are watching), but Erik doesn't seem to mind much. Needless to say, we were much happier about the end result of this game. The 'Heels certainly weren't flawless, but how good does it feel to get a win over Dook on Senior Night at Cameron Indoor Stadium in front of students who have been sleeping in tents for 7 weeks to see that game?!

We've had a nice week/weekend despite the rain that fell pretty much all day yesterday and several days during the week. I worked several different jobs once again and I have to say that I'm enjoying life SO much more now that I have a purpose! This week I have a meeting with a local college that has a Sports Therapy program, which is the closest thing I've seen to an Athletic Training Education Program that exists in Oz. I've expressed an interest in sessional teaching and the director was keen (yes, this is a commonly used word in the Aussie language...and it is the first word that came to my mind when writing...scary!) to meet with me right away, so I am looking forward to hearing what he has to say. We met up with one of Erik's colleagues and his family (wife and 2 young sons) yesterday. They are from Israel and arrived in Melbourne around the same time as we did, so it was nice to share stories and thoughts about the transition, though I give WAY more props to them because they made the move with 2 kids! Our brunch today was at Fruits of Passion in Kensington, which is on a tree-lined street of shops in a town just a few miles from where we live. We rode our bikes there and I'd say that it won't be the last time we head to brunch in that area.

Enjoying the Sunday sunshine!

National Sporting Capital

Melbourne is unofficially referred to as the sporting capital of Australia. Many major sporting events are held here including the Australian Open, Melbourne Cup, Australian Formula One Grand Prix, AFL (Footy) Final, and the Olympic Games in 1956 to name a few. There are other events as well, and in the 6 months that we've been here, we've noticed that the Aussies do love their sport. Of course the interesting thing is that there is essentially no sport at the high school and university level -- it's all club based. This is one of the reasons why I believe it has been so challenging for me to find a job.

On Friday, we had plans to meet up with one of my former athletes from UNC, Kendall Fletcher. Kendall plays for the Victory, the women's professional soccer team here in Melbourne. The men's team is called the Victory as well, and due to her connections, Kendall unexpectedly hooked us up with tickets to watch the men's Victory team play the Central Coast Mariners on Friday night. It was a really good game, as the Mariners were in first place in the league and Melbourne had been struggling a bit, tying in their last 3 contests. The team plays at a soccer specific stadium, AAMI Park, with a pretty sweet view of the CBD.

Crazy-looking skies over the Melbourne Victory game!

Scarves with your favorite team's name on them are very popular here.

We had dinner beforehand at Mexicali Rose, and I would rate the food as pretty decent Mexican. More traditional than Mamasita, similar price range, but the margarita wasn't quite as good. :)

Saturday we had plans to take a long drive down to check out the Latrobe Valley Water Ski Club. Erik and I are considering joining the club so that we have a place to water ski over the next few years. They were having a competition and mentioned that it would be a great weekend to come down. The drive took about 2 hours and certainly got us out into the countryside of Victoria. There were kangaroo signs along the side of the road during much of our drive. The lake is a pretty good set up for skiing, and they have a club boat, a slalom course, a jump ramp, and a smaller "back" lake that they plan to put a mini-course on next season. It is VERY expensive to join compared to what we paid to ski on the Severn River back home, which was a mere $25 a season and boat gas. We also had fantastic people to ski with in Maryland (shout out to Tom and Tim if you are reading this!), who provided beautiful boats for us to ski behind (sorry Tim, Tom wins out here...the Malibu is my favorite boat on the Severn!). The people were great and we actually ran into a guy who used to work at Coble Ski School with Erik many years ago...what a small world! We are still contemplating joining due to the costs and also the distance from our house. Unfortunately it's quite far from where we live and we might only get down there to ski once or twice a month. However, we can camp onsite, so if we go down there to ski we can stay for the weekend and get a good number of sets in!

Sunday I had to work. That's right, I said work! Technically I wasn't getting paid though. I am going to be teaching Sports First Aid and Sports Trainer courses for Sports Medicine Australia over the next few weeks, so I went to observe a Sports Trainer course to see how it compared to my Sports Medicine classes back in the States. It was surprisingly similar in many ways, except that they tape (or STRAP!) the ankle a bit differently than I have learned, so teaching that to students will be a small challenge. I start teaching a week from today, and I am excited and a bit nervous to get back into the classroom because it's been about 9 months since I last taught students!

The Tennis

When tennis is discussed by Australians, it is not merely referred to as tennis, but as "the tennis". This is the case with other sports as well, but since tennis has been in the spotlight lately, that is where I've noticed the saying. So if you are watching the Australian Open on television, commercials or news advertisements will tell you what's on after "the tennis". If someone asks you if you are going to the tournament, they will likely ask if you are heading to "the tennis". If they are cheering for their countrymen or women, they might say "go the Aussies!". This is interesting, because when we left the signature mat out a little too long at our wedding reception, some of my high school friends wrote "Go Terps!" on the mat as they were leaving. Well that must have persuaded my Australian friends to comeback with "Go The Aussies!" on the signature mat. Now it all comes together nearly 5 years later, ha!. The addition of the word "the" is very interesting to me because it seems that, in most cases, the Australian language shortens words (brekky for breakfast, Oz for Australia, tinny for tin can, tele for television, etc., etc., etc.), but in this case they actually add a word. At any rate, I've picked up on it after watching loads of tennis over these last two weeks .

If you have any interest in sports whatsoever, you've probably seen some coverage of the Australian Open. The massive tennis tournament is held right in Melbourne, just a short distance from where we are living, so we thought we would take advantage of that and head over to check it out. We went on the first Friday of the tournament, which turned out to be a great day of competitive matches. It is surprisingly reasonably priced to get into the Open (I say that because everything seems to cost a fortune here), and we paid about $30 each, which gave us access to all of the courts (there must be over 20) except for the two main courts, Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena. Erik knew that a co-worker was going to be in attendance with her husband, so we joined them in some great seats at Margaret Court, which is generally considered the #3 court after Rod Laver and Hisense. They had been to the Australian Open before and mentioned that they had previously moved around during the day to different courts but had discovered that it was usually best to find good seats in one arena and stick with them throughout the day, as good seats are sometimes hard to come by the afternoon.

The first match was a men's doubles match and proved to be quite exciting. I say this because an unranked duo was upsetting a ranked Italian men's team, and one of the Italian guys was NOT happy about that. I presume he was cursing in Italian and he threw his racquet on several occasions. It was very entertaining! The doubles team that upset the Italians went on to upset many other teams, and they are playing  just dominated the Americans in the championship match!

Italians are on the right. Server is the racquet-thrower!
(FYI, you can always click on the pictures to enlarge them!)

In match #2 at Margaret Court, we watched the #8 ranked women's singles player, Radwanska, win over her unranked opponent. This match was entertaining because Radwanska had a great group of fans supporting her, singing songs such as "if you're Polish and you know it clap your hands", eventually getting the entire crowd to clap with them. Radwanska bowed down to them at the end of the match to thank them for their support!

Radwanska and her fan club.

The next match was Berdych, the #7 ranked men's singles player, who won the match and went on to face Nadal in the quarterfinals. The level of tennis in this match was extremely good, and it was phenomenal to witness up close how incredibly fast the men hit the tennis ball .

The crowd watching Roger's match as he plays inside Rod Laver Arena.

Tournament Brackets

In the middle of the Berdych match, we realized that the Bryan brothers, the #1 ranked men's doubles team from the good 'ole US of A, was about to take on the Australian doubles team on Court #2. Many people would be wanting to watch this match because Lleyton Hewitt, an Aussie favorite, would be playing. We decided to leave our superb seats in order to have a chance to witness a great tennis atmosphere. When we arrived at Court #2, there were lines of at least 20 people at each entrance (Federer had just finished playing in Rod Laver, so there was a massive exodus to go watch Hewitt around the same time that we were trying to grab seats). There was still about an hour before the match would likely begin, but we decided to wait around in hopes that we would get a seat between matches. After waiting for about 20 minutes, I saw bunch of people falling out of line. The women behind me received a phone call and she said "they moved the match", to the person on the phone. Fortunately we picked up on that right away and left the line to figure out where the match would be played. We found out it would be on Court #3, so at that point we were literally running through the crowd to get to Court #3 for a chance at a seat. Luckily we went all the way around the court (most people were too lazy to go around to the far side), and got prime seating for the match. The Americans beat the Aussies despite lots of "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie" cheering from the crowd. It was an impressive match to watch and I was equally impressed with the crowd's wave-creating skills!

Bryan brothers are in the navy and white uniforms.

The WAVE!

My favorite Aussie fan at this match!

Game, set, match! Bryan brothers win this time, but end up losing in the Championship Match.

Hopefully we'll have a chance to attend the Australian Open a few more times before our time in Melbourne is up. Perhaps you'd like to come visit us in January next year so that you can see it for yourself?!