At Six’s school they’re always trying to entice the kids to get involved in sports stuff and this last week they started running an AFL training session after school.
Aussie Rules, as AFL is colloquially known, is a bizarre game which is a mix of Gaelic football, rugby, football, and running around as fast as you can while bouncing a rugby-shaped ball in front of you and hoping it will come back to your hands and not spin off sideways into the pie-cart on the sidelines (there is no bigger faux-pas in  AFL than hitting the pie-cart...).
Anyhow, Six was keen to do it because for $33 you get six weeks of running around trying to catch that bouncing ball, plus a holdall, ball, cap, drinks bottle, CD, photo-frame, stationary set, football pump and a tenner from the bank with a money box. By anyone’s standards it’s worth just going along just for that (which I’m sure is why Six wantsto have a go...).
Sadly, on week one, the boy is sick with a bad stomach bug – as is his younger brother – so I’ve put a large black cross on the door and I ring a handbell at opportune moments as I mooch around the house, just to warn passers-by we have the plauge.
The thing with AFL is, you can watch it as much as you like – and I have been for 15 years now – and you will never understand the game.
Two teams of blokes wearing unfashionably tight shorts and tops with no sleeves run around this oval shaped pitch like madmen, passing the misshapen ball back and forth, bouncing it as they run and then kicking it through some rugby-type posts.
Two blokes dressed in white, wearing porkpie hats, who look like they have just come from the local butchers after giving a piece of brisket a good seeing-to, stand either side of the posts and if the ball goes through they each stick out an arm and a hand with a flourish only Italian traffic police can rival, and the crowd goes wild.
I have no idea how the scoring works because each time someone scores, a box comes up at the bottom of the TV screen with 58 assorted rows of numbers in it. I’ve tried everything to work it out, including a slide rule, set of compasses and a weather-vane but it’s still all gibberish to me.
Anyway, if you get a chance, it’s worth watching. I just can’t think of another game where the teams get to run around so much for so long, or where $33 buys you stuff to keep your nippers quiet for, oh I don't know, 20 minutes. Honestly, I'd pay three grand for such moments of peace.