Footing the Footy.

So tonight in North America there was some big football game on or something; this attracted about as much attention from me as the Grand Final did when I lived back in Victoria. In commemoration (or perhaps in distraction) I played a new World of Warcraft alt (dwarf enhancement shamans, represent! \o/) and watched geeky stuff on TV. Star Trek movie marathon? Make it so!

Sport isn't my thing, but it amazes me the different permutations of activities the word "football" gets added to. So here it is, an Outsider's View of Footy.

Aussie Rules: A bunch of guys get together and jump on one another's heads, trying to kick a vaguely elliptical ball through four sticks at opposing ends of a grassy oval. Blood flies, balls bounce and much skin is shown, whether it's intentional or not. Teams are often, but not always, named after animals, and it seems that those who play this game have knee reconstructions incredibly early in their lives. No running with the ball unless you're bouncing it, and this is the game with high flying marks and kicks.

Rugby League/Union: I wish I knew. I don't even know the difference between the two codes. These forms of the game are popular further north than I come from - well, apart from the Melbourne Storm - but I know little about them save that they are allowed to carry the ball at times, there's a lot of bum sniffing going on, and not as much jumping around as in Aussie Rules. The teams pack together in tight "scrums", pushing and shoving each other until someone can manage to flick the ball out from under the dogpile and get it moving toward the big "H" at either end of the field. Lots of blood, lots of grunting and the ball seems to be a tad fatter than that of Aussie Rules.

Gridiron: I'm still working this one out, though of course images of it have been disseminated to we lowly Aussies for years through TV and various other media. It seems vaguely similar to what I know of rugby, though with less bum sniffing (but more dogpiling) and more armour (probably because of said dogpiling), with "yard lines" they need to get the ball past to ultimately get a "touchdown". The sheer amounts of padding and helmetting worn by these guys tells me this has to be a very physical game, but I have no idea as not much of the players actually shows. Their "oval" is actually a rectangle, so they don't call it an oval at all. There's a lot of pushing and shoving going on in it, and a whole lot of grunting. These guys can pick up the ball, as long as they can push their way through the flying bodies of tackling others to get to the goal line.

Soccer/English Football: I'm going to be killed for this, but I can't tell if there's any difference between soccer and English football at all. No hand holding at all, it's all fancy footwork, and their goals are big nets. The ball is round and it doesn't seem to matter where the ball gets handled, as long as it's not by a hand. Heads, feet, knees, chests - anything goes in the wacky world of Soccer.

So there you go. I'm so dead, aren't I?