My first game of competition AFL

So tonight I rocked up to Yeronga AFC to see if I could get a game of 9 a side AFL... which I did. Funny part was when I was introduced to the captain of the team I would be playing for and he asked me if I had a white shirt. I looked down at what I was wearing (a blue shirt) and said "Nah mate, sorry". How is that funny? Well his facial expression in response was the funny part, he actually managed to look disappointed and mildly annoyed... as if I should have known all along what colour shirt I would have needed :p

Anyway he gave me a spare shirt and I donned it before walking over to the rest of the team on the field. 9 a side is played on what would about half a normal AFL field wide and slightly shorter than an entire field long. When I first got to go on I was presented with a blue armband and was informed I'd be playing forward. Turns out that only the people with the armbands can kick goals, when I found this out I turned to one of the other armband wearing forwards and said "So no pressure huh?" and we had a laugh.

Not long after taking the field the ball was in the midfield heading for our goal. One of our midfielders was about to be tackled and I ran towards him and screamed for the ball. He handballed it off to me and I had my first official possession! Knowing there was a defender hot on my heels and being on the wing about 15m out from goal, I spun and dropped it onto my foot. I watched as it curled and skied towards goal and was certain it was going to go in!

It then began to fall groundwards and while I was still sure it was going to goal it wasn't going to make it on the full. One of our other forwards realising this marked directly in front about 2 metres out and popped it through. He came running over to me after and said "I would have sheperded it in mate but it could have bounced anywhere", this made sense and I wasn't expecting him to do anything less and I told him so.

Unfortunately that was my only possession for the game. I played mostly forward but also got a run in the backline. I found it's very hard to read when, and where, a forward is going to run off you in a proper game. I tried to lay one tackle on the wing and got promptly shrugged off as I went in too soft. I made up for this later in the goal square when I was an armband wearing forward and a defender was trying to clear, I got there a millisecond too late but I brought him to the ground and was pretty happy with how that went.

Playing as a forward again I put some pressure on a defender and smothered a kick when he was attempting to clear the ball into their half of the ground. Throughout the night I made plenty of little leads running off defenders and watched as a few kicks coming towards me were kicked by guys who had too much Weet-Bix for breakfast and sailed over my head forcing me to stop and spin and one or two where if I could jump higher I know I would be a better forward target :)

All in all I had fun. Statistically might not have had that much of an impact, we got flogged by the way, but I hope I made some form of contribution. Got a game with them again next week @ 19:30 and I can't wait!