For those of you who don't know me, I'm Ben, one of the staff members here at AFANA and I thought I'd share a little bit about how I came about loving the sport of Australian Football.
Ever since I was a little kid, I've been infatuated with Australia. I think it began when my parents got me those animal fact cards that were all the rage back in the 70s. The animals that really caught my eye were the ones from Australia- the kangaroo, Tasmanian devil and Tasmanian wolf. I then got some books on the country and came across "Australian Football". Since I was really too young to comprehend much about sports, I just assumed it was a little different that American football and moved on.
Fast forward to my college years. I'm working at a Radio Shack in the metro Detroit area and we have a satelite dish hooked up for demonstration purposes. At the time, ESPN was still showing footy so one day, while we were going through the channels, we came across a game being played. The store was empty so we stopped what we were doing at watched the footy game. My coworkers and I were utterly amazed at how fast and hard-hitting the game was, how they would beat the snot out of each other even though they weren't wearing any pads.
Once I got internet access, I started looking up all kinds of things on Australian Football. It was during this time that I came across AFANA. In 1999 I took a trip sponsored by AFANA to Sydney and the Melbourne to watch the Grand Final, which was played that year between Carlton and North Melbourne. It was quite an experience for my first-ever live footy game to be their "Super Bowl" game. Seeing the game played live, I got a much deeper appreciation for the strategy involved and really started becoming more of a fan.
I would love to see this sport take off here in the US as I believe that it is the kind of sport that sports-loving Americans would embrace once they got to know it.
