The question comes up again and again,
"What's going on?!?", "How do you play?",
"What's a behind?", "Does anybody ever die?"
etc. Well I found an article on The Age describing the game
pretty well so here it is.
Footy '98's beginner's guide to understanding everything
you'll ever need to know about Australian Rules football.
Read this and you could all but take on Kevin Sheedy in
a trivia contest, loser shaves his head.
Australian Rules football is one of the most spectacular,
physically demanding, fastest and - to the beginner - most
confusing games in the world. Watched by hundreds of thousands
of people across Australia every weekend from March to September,
in Denmark we start in April, it puts teams of 22 muscle-bound,
fast-running athletes against one another in pursuit of
an oval-shaped leather ball.
The smaller running players often run a half-marathon in
the course of a game (all the while being hit from all directions),
while taller players leap into the air, trying to stand
on one another's shoulders to catch the ball. Is this a
great game, or what?
There are 16 teams in the premier competition, the Australian
Football League, with many other minor leagues also happening
across the nation and around the suburbs and country towns.
Star players in the AFL can receive upwards of $300,000
per season, although clubs have a salary cap of $3.2 million
per year. While this is small change when compared with
American and European sporting salaries, the Australian
sporting marketplace is smaller and less wealthy.
