Riffing off of Monday’s post, I’d like to start a weekly feature called ;World Wide Web Wednesday’. More than just posting a ‘here’s a link I like’, I’d like to tell you a little more about myself through sites I regularly visit. So without further ado, today’s World Wide Web Wednesday link is…
www.afl.com.au – the Australian Football League
Back in the 1980’s when I was playing football (American football), I had practice every Saturday morning. On one occasion while waiting for my ride, I flipped through the channels on the television and landed on ESPN. Those of you my age may remember the days when ESPN had programs on in the morning other than SportCenter like business news. Mornings on the weekend were the province sports around the world. Saturday morning at 7 was Australian Rules Football.
Just imagine, a teenage boy from an area so behind the times that soccer was considered as a potential vehicle for communist infiltration (it was the Eighties, after all) standing there with shoulder pads in hand watching ‘footy’. Large groups of people wearing winter clothes in August watching men wearing nothing but shorts and sleeveless shirts running around with an over-inflated football. The caught the ball, punted the ball, bounced the ball off the ground, passed the ball by punching it, and, ultimately, kicked it between two large sticks and two smaller ones at the end of the field. After scores, goal judges at the end with their white coats and fedoras would run out, straighten their coats, an point their fingers like a gun whenever someone scored were something out of another time. The fans right behind would shake their mammoth poms poms up and down in celebration. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.
It was AWESOME.
Saturday mornings during the season saw me watching half an hour of highlights followed by half and hour of the game of the week. I was hooked, so it was profoundly disappointing when ESPN stopped airing the program.
It was nearly twenty years before Aussie rules and I crossed paths again. I worked a part-time job on Saturday midnight shift where I had nothing to do but sit around and wait for the phone to ring a time or two during the night. Surfing the internet, I eventually ran across the site listed above. During that year, completed games were streamed across the internet for free and I spent my entire night watching game after game. When they finally put the videos behind a paywall, I listened to them on the radio. Sure, some of my coworkers looked at me funny, but it helped me pass the time. When I finally quit that job, the link was broken again as I did not have access to broadband at my home.
Today, I could watch almost half of the games live on cable in my living room or DVR them for later. The games that I can’t get on cable I can watch for five bucks a week on the internet, even on my smartphone. It’s a far cry from my childhood where you could watch half an hour of highlights at a set time each week. The funny thing, now that I could watch them any time I want, I don’t watch them at all. It seems that one doesn’t have time when you have children and a house and a dog and a blog. Have I mentioned that I have too many hobbies.
It truly is a World Wide Web.
P.S. My team? St. Kilda. They’re lovable losers, just like me.