At the time of writing I’ve been studying at Flinders for just over a month, in that time, as well as doing all my course work, I’ve been out exploring the city and seeing what it has to offer. The highlight so far has been going to an Ozzie football match at the Adelaide Oval.
One of the first thing I learned about upon arrival in Australia was just how big footy is here. I had read about it online when I was doing research into the country prior to travelling but I never realised just how different it is to the game we call football in the UK. What is called football in the UK is called soccer here. But as anyone that’s knows anything about footy, it’s nothing like soccer. The closest thing we have to footy in the UK is Gallic football. Having discovered just how big a deal footy is in Australia, I couldn’t not see a match. So I booked to see Port Adelaide v the Melbourne Demons, with a friend. I was warned beforehand that the rules to footy are a bit confusing for a first time observer. We had spent the hour prior to the game watching YouTube videos trying to gain a basic understanding of what would be happening. This didn’t really help but luckily the fans sitting in the row in front of us were happy to explain the more complicated aspects of the game, after they heard the confused foreign accents. Despite the game not being a good result for the home team, – the final score was 94:54 to Melbourne- I really enjoyed it. The atmosphere was great, with there being over 30000 people in the Oval, it far surpassed any event I’d been to before.
Alasdhair McBride, semester exchange at Flinders University from University of Stirling, the U.K., Semester 2 2016
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