Aussie Seahawk
Well-known member
I have kept forgetting to post about what is, to me, a very wonderful "elephant in the room" event, which happened late last September. My beloved Sturt Football Club (semi-professional local Aussie rules footy team) won their second successive Premiership.
BUT… I was on a coach in Europe, between Prague and the Czech/German border, when the game was on, trying to follow it on slow wifi on my brand new phone, which I was pretty clueless about. I stuffed up the time difference - it was very late in the fourth quarter when I started to follow it, when we boarded the coach. Not a live broadcast, just a score update every minute or so…
Scores were even, and kept being even, until we were suddenly winning by one point. THEN the final siren blew!
Christ, that few minutes seemed to last for years, and when it said FINAL SCORE I of course went nuts, with everyone on the coach wondering what on earth was happening! This was like winning a basketball game by a single point, I guess, and we Sturt folk to this day are haunted by being beaten by one point in 1978 in the Grand Final that year, after going 20-1 in the regular season.
The German border (apparently hardly anything to mark it) went by totally un-noticed by me.
ANOTHER delicious layer to the onion of victory... in our local footy competition, there are 8 teams like Sturt, who represent various suburban areas of the city of Adelaide, in a totally semi-professional environment. All players have jobs, or are studying, etc, and none would earn over $25,000 a year or so. Heck, the entire team salary cap is around $400,000, for a squad of 30 or so players.
BUT... there are two teams in this ten-team competition who are comprised of backup players for the two fully-professional national league teams which come from Adelaide. These players are all professionals - earning at least $70,000 a year. NOT enough to get rich, of course, but enough not to have to work.
So, on any given game day, the semi-pros arrive from jobs or study to play or train, but the pros from the two National teams arrive from rest, rehab, physio, etc.
NOTFAIR! But... we beat the bastards!!!
GO DOUBLE BLUES!!! New season starts Easter weekend; I love this time of year - beginning of autumn (slowly here - summer won't bloody give in easily), daylight saving about to end too, and maybe it is only two months before I have my first fire for the season.
BUT… I was on a coach in Europe, between Prague and the Czech/German border, when the game was on, trying to follow it on slow wifi on my brand new phone, which I was pretty clueless about. I stuffed up the time difference - it was very late in the fourth quarter when I started to follow it, when we boarded the coach. Not a live broadcast, just a score update every minute or so…
Scores were even, and kept being even, until we were suddenly winning by one point. THEN the final siren blew!
Christ, that few minutes seemed to last for years, and when it said FINAL SCORE I of course went nuts, with everyone on the coach wondering what on earth was happening! This was like winning a basketball game by a single point, I guess, and we Sturt folk to this day are haunted by being beaten by one point in 1978 in the Grand Final that year, after going 20-1 in the regular season.
The German border (apparently hardly anything to mark it) went by totally un-noticed by me.
ANOTHER delicious layer to the onion of victory... in our local footy competition, there are 8 teams like Sturt, who represent various suburban areas of the city of Adelaide, in a totally semi-professional environment. All players have jobs, or are studying, etc, and none would earn over $25,000 a year or so. Heck, the entire team salary cap is around $400,000, for a squad of 30 or so players.
BUT... there are two teams in this ten-team competition who are comprised of backup players for the two fully-professional national league teams which come from Adelaide. These players are all professionals - earning at least $70,000 a year. NOT enough to get rich, of course, but enough not to have to work.
So, on any given game day, the semi-pros arrive from jobs or study to play or train, but the pros from the two National teams arrive from rest, rehab, physio, etc.
NOTFAIR! But... we beat the bastards!!!
GO DOUBLE BLUES!!! New season starts Easter weekend; I love this time of year - beginning of autumn (slowly here - summer won't bloody give in easily), daylight saving about to end too, and maybe it is only two months before I have my first fire for the season.