I'm back on the net, and I'm quite well relaxed now as the end of my holiday period draws near.
One of the really cool things about being in Melbourne in September is being around for finals time. And yes. I was there last Friday night. And I am so glad I got to be there. Oh baby it was good.
I was sitting somewhere high up in the Great Southern Stand. Still had a pretty good view except for a small blindspot (which got bigger when the ball went there as everyone decides there going to stand up and look closer). I was mostly surrounded by locals of the St Kilda supporting variety. One particular man to my right was getting less and less sober as the night went on. There was 1 Swans fan to my right and 1 to my left, and small pockets around you could tell existed every time we scored a goal.
The Saints took the first goal of the match, though we traded for the first few goals until we broke with five for the quarter to the Saints 3. The second quarter I could tell that this was going to be a more tightly fought match, though the saints benefitted from a vary large penalty count against the Swans. The extra free kicks allowed them to close on the score. The third quarter was mixed. The Saints seemed to be winning the 1st 10 minutes (much to my consternation as the fans around me got more rowdy, and that guy getting more reasons to be drunk). However, the latter half of that quarter was, in my opinion, won by the Swans as they gathered more possessions and had plenty more play in the goalward 50. At the break, we were 7 points behind, and I felt that if Sydney were able to keep up that effort, they should grind out a win.
"Grind out a win" became an understatement.
As a rush of goals came, all the Swans supporters got more and more excited, and all of the Saints fan got more and more demoralised, and that guy got more and more 'rough' with his language. As it became apparent that 7 goals in less than 10 minutes was basically impossible for the Saints to achieve and harder with every passing second, large numbers of pathetic lose- .... I mean poor Saints fans - left, while those in the colours of Sydney were cheer, cheering the red and the white. It was after about the 5th goal of that quarter that I remembered the words of a friend of mine who supports the Richmond tigers, who in the context of a conversation about me seeing the game said that you like to have a game where its close for 3 quarters, and then in the last you comfortably win. Comfort doesn't quite capture the winning margin.
Anyway, the rest of my time in Melbourne was pretty cool (on several levels), and I'm glad to be back.
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2 comments:
Say, did you visit any Melbourne churches when you were down?
No, I didn't get around to planning which churches a) were not liberal b) where these non-liberal churches were c) remembering who it was I knew from Melbourne AND how to contact them.
Maybe next time (should I ever go down there again, though Melbourne in September seems to be a fine idea as long as the Swans keep making the finals)
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