Rob's Blog

I felt pretty special on the walk from Melbourne city centre to the MCG for the AFL grand final. We passed at least 10 people with signs begging for tickets to the game, and I had mine and I was not going to sell it. Well, if the price was right, I could be tempted.

I wonder if any of them got a last-minute ticket, though I doubt it. If someone offered me over $1000 I would have sold them mine, but that was unlikely. AFL authorities were out to stop any scalpers, so I would not be risking it close to the ground.

If I was going to try and pick up any tickets before the game, I would try the pubs or at least be further away. Actually, if I did not have tickets, which was nearly the case, I would have forgotten all about trying to get hold of any at the last minute and organised to watch the game at a friend’s place or at a pub nearby. That way you can avoid any disappointment, relax with a few drinks, hear the commentary, yell and scream whatever you want, then come out later and celebrate into the night with the crowd if your team wins.

Related Pages: AFL, MCG

The 2006 Grand Final Sprint was won by the Carlton player Brendan Fevola (the ‘Fev’). I don’t understand why, but this year it was a handicap event, meaning the players started from different marks.

In the old days (as far as I can remember) all the players would run off scratch, which then meant that the winner was the fastest AFL player around (unless the fastest player was in one of the Grand Final Teams), which I thought was the purpose of the whole thing.

A bit of searching found out that the contestants’ times over 20 metres were sourced from their clubs and sent to Athletics Australia, which then devised the handicap marks for each player. The result of the final sprint did not mean much at all, except that maybe Fev was foxing when the club did their sprint tests, enabling him to have an 8m head start.

Let’s hope they revert to the straight sprint for next year.

Related Pages: AFL, Carlton Blues, Grand Final Sprint

Last night was the vote for the fairest and best AFL player of the year. It is one for the die hard footy fan – reading out the votes round by round has never excited me very much. Even in the media, it seems like more of the interest was on what the female partners of the players were wearing. This year the AFL enforced their black tie dress code for the players. Apparently this requirement has been around for a couple of years, but this year they were going to enforce it. The whole thing backfired anyway, as the winner was not present, and was in Sydney at their own function, wearing a red and white tie! For the players, it appears like a good party night out, as every time the camera went on them they were swigging from a bottle of beer. It became a good advertisement for Crown Lager. By the end of the night, many of them probably did not remember if they polled any votes.

Related Pages: AFL, Brownlow Medal

Tickets to the AFL Grand Final are hard to come by. Although the MCG has a capacity of nearly 100,000 people, in this footy-mad city many more than that are eager to go to the game. Even though I have connections to the Richmond Football Club, there were no tickets allocated to the general staff, as all of their tickets go into corporate packages available at thousands of dollars each.

The AFL administration had blocked anyone selling them on eBay, though there were plenty of people asking for tickets there. Our only hope was obtaining one through the extra tickets allocated to the Grand Final participating teams. Both Fremantle and Eagles were chances for the final, and through members that we knew in Perth we were able to put our names down for tickets in case either team made it into the final.

The Dockers failed in their preliminary final, thankfully the Eagles won theirs, and our tickets for the big one came through the following day. We are going to the Final!

Related Pages: AFL, Fremantle Dockers, West Coast Eagles