Week 7 - Aboriginal Rugby

I knew this game was going to be rough from the first two minutes, when a man roughly the size of Montana was sitting in the medic’s chair in front of me, blood gushing all over his face and flowing down to the grass. This game clearly isn’t for the faint of heart or the dainty, but at the same time it was riveting and I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the field.

            In a way, this adult rugby game reminded me a lot of the Roman Gladiators, where huge crowds would gather just to watch two men rip each other’s heads off. I never understood why violence was so interesting and captivating, but for some reason, there’s something about the human mind that just loves it. I’ll never understand it, but I was definitely caught up in the drama.

            Not only is this game crazy, but it also has a ton of history, especially surrounding aboriginal/Black civil rights from the 1960’s. It was interesting that this league was specifically called “aboriginal,” because I would honestly speculate that there were about an equal number of black and white people playing on the field. The entire game was completely integrated and I didn’t understand why it was considered to be “aboriginal” at all.

            That being said, it was pretty cool to see grown men playing a serious sport together. I feel that a concept like this isn’t very accepted in America, where most of the men the rugby player’s age would be too busy with full-time jobs or just not in shape enough at all to play contact sports. The most involvement they seem to get in the states is by watching a sport on TV, not actually rolling around in the mud playing, breathing, and living it like these men do. 

Week 6 - Netball

It was a pretty weird and funny coincidence that the day we learned about netball in lecture, there was a huge inter-collegiate netball tournament happening on campus. As I was sitting in my room, I heard extremely loud cheering coming from the direction of the rugby fields across the street. I had no idea what was going on but my friend who lives on my floor heard the cheering too, and we decided to head onto campus to check it out.
Little did we know, we stumbled right into a Wesley College vs. Women’s College netball game, and it seemed to be a big one. Both teams were being largely supported by students in their colleges, all decked out in the same shirts. I noticed two things about the spectator audience that kind of took me by surprise: it was a coed group and the guys seemed to be more into it than the girls. The set up of the match was reminiscent of an intramural sporting event at home, except the crowd here was larger and way more excited.
As for the actual sport of netball, it was pretty interesting to watch! It reminds me of playing basketball with a volleyball and a smaller hoop, and the girls that were playing happened to be really athletic and talented. It also made me proud that so many people were there supporting a woman’s sporting event, because back in the states, I feel that they aren’t that popular or appreciated at all. Basically I felt a surge of girl power, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching the game!