Well today was the big day...my very first AFL Footy match! ANZAC Day is a big national holiday here - kind of like a combination of Remembrance Day and Canada Day all rolled into one. Many of the past and present service men and women march in local parades with their units. If your parent was a veteran then you can march wearing their medals on your right side (veterans and current military wear theirs on the left). We saw some of the parade at Flinder St. Station in downtown Melbourne.
Then we were off to the footy match at MCG (Melbourne Cricket Grounds). It is a huge stadium, and there were 87,000 of us at the match. The game was between the Essendon Bombers and the Collingwood Magpies, you barrack (cheer) for your side - I have been told I am a Collingwood fan - as far as I can tell their fans are as passionate as Rider fans and everyone loves to hate Collingwood so it does make some sense! Joan barracks for Collingwood and Cookie barracks for Essendon, and as you can see I tried to represent the Riders but ended up wearing a Collingwood beanie (toque to my Canadian readers :-) since the weather was fairly cool, luckily we were under cover and stayed dry.
They had a ANZAC ceremony and moment of silence...
Then the match was under way...
Collingwood won by one point (80-79) but it was a hard fought last few minutes and came down to the last seconds. It is very exciting at the end when the score is close because you don't know how much time is left, much like in soccer only the Umpires know and they don't tell you in footy how much stoppage time, so you are just waiting for the horn to go or praying it won't, depending on the score. I may have to figure out a way to follow footy more closely in Canada...quite an addicting game!
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