Footy Featured in America West Magazine

Q: What's the difference between Australian Rules Football and, say, rugby?  Or NFL football?-M.J.W., Los Angeles.

A: Dust off your satellite dish, M.J.W., because starting this month, you have plenty of opportunities to divine the differences and refine your sporting sensibilities. The Australian Football League season runs from March through September, when the Grand Final is played in Melbourne; the league's domestic corollary, the United States Australian Football League, follows suit.

All three sports involve an ovoid-shaped ball that is advanced down the field by running, kicking or passing, and in all three sports people get dramatically decked. Aussie Rules and rugby players wear shorts and eschew headgear and padding, and their play is relatively unimpeded by action-stopping strategies such as huddles and end-zone cellular telephone calls. To the untrained eye, they might look similar.

But, according to Scott Hunt, director of public relations for the U.S. Australian Football League who resides in that Aussie Rules hotbed of Dallas (America's Team!), "Asking the difference (among) U.S. football, rugby and Aussie Rules is almost like asking the difference (among) Spanish, Italian and French-although they share some origins, they are completely different entities."

Some quantifiable differences among Australian Rules (affectionately called "footy" by Aussies, who never met a diminutive they didn't love), Rugby Union and the National Football League:

--The field of play: footy's oval-shaped "pitch" is as long as 185 meters by as wide as 155 meters (202 yards by 170 yards); rugby's pitch, 100 meters by 69 meters (109 yards by 75 yards); and the NFL's field, 120 yards, including end zones, by 160 feet.

--The number of players on the field: AFL teams, 18; Rugby Union teams, 15; and NFL teams, 11.

--Period of regulation play: AFL, four 20-minute quarters; rugby, two 40-minute halves; NFL, four 15-minute quarters.

--The weight of the ball, blah, blah, blah ...

Those are just numbers, and that's not what you really want to know. And you don't really want to know that in Aussie Rules, you may not throw a forward pass, as in the NFL, or lateral the ball, as in rugby (where you may pass only laterally or behind, but never forward). In footy, you may advance the ball by handballing (a volleyball-like serve) to another player; by kicking to another player, who catches the "mark" (similar to an NFL pass reception); or by running, provided you bounce it on the turf every 15 meters. You don't want to know that in footy, the ball must be kicked through the goalposts located on each end of the grounds, whereas rugby and U.S. football teams also score by passing and running the ball.

What you really want to know is how Aussie Rules and rugby players, without benefit of protective gear, can emerge from full-tilt running/tackling contact with their faculties, not to mention their anterior cruciate ligaments, intact. After all, in rugby, the rules deem that no player may leave the field except for a "blood substitute."

Spectacular collisions simply make for splendid spectating. In 1987, when All Things Australian were as hot in this country as a shrimp on the barbie, Aussie Rules official Ross Oakley commented about an exhibition of his sport at the Los Angeles Coliseum: "Even those who don't understand it should get a real buzz out of it. Some have described the game as one of organized mayhem. I think that's unfair. There's really nothing organized about it."

THIS ARTICLE, (c) 2004 BY ELLEN ALPERSTEIN, ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN AMERICA WEST MAGAZINE. IT IS REPRINTED HERE BY PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR. ALPERSTEIN IS THE MAGAZINE'S EDITOR AND WRITES THE MONTHLY Q&A SPORTS COLUMN, WHO'S ON FIRST? SHE WELCOMES SPORTS QUESTIONS AT WHOSONFIRST@ADELPHIA.NET

- Ellen Alperstein
(341)