The Curse Continues

I have not yet been to a football match that West Coast have won. In fact there have only been 2 games that I have been to, where the team I've been supporting has won.

This weekend was no different. Paul and I went to see Melbourne vs West Coast on Saturday at the MCG. Melbourne won by 20 points. The game wasn't actually that bad. There were some good moments throughout the game. However West Coast seemed unable to deliver the ball cleanly into their forward 50. I guess we've just got to give the young players time to finess their skills, accuracy and consistency. It had better bloody happen when I'm in Melbourne and can get along to the matches though!

The lowlights of the game were bogan supporters. One was a bit of a wanker and decided to have a real go at the umpire. I'm not sure what game he was watching because I didn't think the umpire made a particularly bad call and judging by the lack of boos, neither did the rest of the crowd. It was rather entertaining though and the security guard trying to get him to settle down was even more entertaining.

The next was a larger group of young male bogans. They yelled offensive comments to players and umpires alike. None of which were particularly relevant to the game. I do believe at one stage, the boundary umpire's major flaw was that he was bald. I'm not quite sure how that impacted on his umpiring abilities, but obviously quite significantly if they felt the need to point it out to him. I just don't understand this need to entertain oneself by insulting others. It was totally unnecessary - especially as there were lots of young kids around them. I'm surprised that security didn't tell them to quieten down a little.

The best part of the game was that it was a Melbourne home game, so due to their lack of members, we got front row seats in the members section without even booking in advance. Yay! We had the perfect possie for photography. Unfortunately I was too wrapped up in the game to take many pics, but the ones I did take are here.

The Soccer Comes the the G

Last night we journeyed to the MCG to freeze our butts off and watch Australia vs Japan. Although this was a dead rubber, Australia needed to win or draw to come top of their pool. Australia won 2:1.

To be perfectly honest my main concern with the game was that the 90 minutes would drag and I would get totally bored and focus on how cold it was. I don't have the longest attention span in the world and lets face it, soccer's not exactly AFL ;)

As it turned out, even though the game started pretty slowly, I hardly even noticed time ticking over. I think the only time the match actually felt like it was dragging was in the last 5 minutes of the game when Australia were just trying to slow the play down and prevent Japan from scoring.

Highlight of the match for me was Australia's first goal. The stadium erupted and two flares were set off, so it actually felt like we were at a proper soccer match. Up until that point it had been a bit staid. There were a few mexican waves, but no real chanting or anything to differentiate it from a cricket match. Australia is definitely lacking some team songs.