The Melbourne Cricket Grounds.
Saturday,
August 6th.
The
International Teachers Association had arranged an get together at
the Melbourne Cricket Grounds for Canadian teachers in Victoria and
members of the association (they are all teachers who have done
exchanges too) who wanted to attend. Carol, Bev and I attended along
with several other Canadians and their families.
The
MCG was built for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. It has 95 000 seats
and has standing room for another 5 000. It was constructed on the
site where the original cricket grounds were located in the 1850's.
The
game today was between the Hawthorne Hawks and the Melbourne Football
Club. Unlike the game we saw a few weeks ago, this one was a close
match from the beginning and the lead exchanged several times. It
wasn't decided until the last five minutes when Melbourne scored four
unanswered goals to win the match. I understood the game better and
it is entertaining to watch, but I have to say the field is enormous.
They play on the cricket pitch which is a very large oval. I have
heard that the game of Australian Rules Football was created to make
use of the cricket pitches that were unused most of the year. Soccer
and rugby both use a rectangular field like football back home. This
helps to explain why they kick the ball to each other instead of
throwing it, as they can cover more ground that way. And there are no
end zones as the cricket field doesn't have them. The game is part
rugby, part soccer, with a dash of basketball, with some unique
Australian ideas as well (for example the hand pass which has to be
punched to your team mate rather than thrown and the throw in where
an official throws the ball back into play by standing with his back
to the field and throwing it as far as he can over his head and
behind him). Ten of the eighteen teams are from the Melbourne area as
the game was invented in Victoria.But there are two teams from
Western Australia, two from New South Wales, two from South Australia
and two from Queensland. The teams from Melbourne all use the
Melbourne Cricket Grounds as their home field so there are often two
or three games played there over a weekend. Can you imagine ten
hockey teams in Toronto all sharing ACC?
After
the game a group of us went to a pub and had a drink and dinner. We
had a chance to talk about our teaching assignments and experiences.
One couple is unhappy with their remote small town placement at
Echuca (I went there a couple of months ago), but everyone else seems
quite happy.
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