2014 AFL Grand Final

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sj-roc
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Just tuned over to TSN2 where the 2014 AFL Grand Final is airing live from Melbourne Cricket Grounds as I type.

Two years ago, Victoria's Mike Pyke as a member of Sydney became the first Canadian to play on an AFL championship team. He's back with Sydney bidding for a 2nd championship but it doesn't look hopeful: his team trails 107-53 as the third quarter wraps.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
South Pender
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AFL? What's that? American Federation of Labor? American Football League? Arena Football League? Amateur Football League? A Free Lunch? Can't keep up with all the acronyms.... :wink:
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sj-roc
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South Pender wrote:AFL? What's that? American Federation of Labor? American Football League? Arena Football League? Amateur Football League? A Free Lunch? Can't keep up with all the acronyms.... :wink:
Hmmm...

This sounds like it might be a call back to our recent discussion of the relative clarity and merits of terms used to describe the post-TD scoring play in Canadian and American football, and that my use of just "AFL" is sacrificing clarity for brevity. To that I would say my use of other words and phrases (Grand Final, Sydney, Melbourne Cricket Ground), not to mention the timing of the post, would offer a clarifying context.

Or perhaps this is overthinking the matter and your post is simply an ex nihilo attempt at bringing some funny to the board. Which is fine.

Perhaps there would have been maximal clarity if I'd spelled out AFL in full. Or, maybe I should have just used the phrase that still seems to have some currency in this neck of the woods: Australian rules football.

Well, now it's my turn to go on a linguistic tangent, much like you did on the issue of gender in grammar — one that had some good points and that I certainly had no problem with hearing, even if it was raised, well, tangentially on a board like this (I may not have made that clear then so let this make it so). So I'm sure you'll indulge me in return. Anyway here goes: That last phrase in the preceding paragraph is one I've come to realise that I rather dislike (don't worry — I'm not attacking you or trying to position you as in opposition to my stance; this is truly an apropos-of-nothing tangent).

I can't quite put my finger on it, but it rubs me the wrong way, in a way that the phrase "Australian football" doesn't. And not because it's longer and perhaps clumsier (in fact, here I would actually sacrifice brevity to undo my dislike of the phrase if necessary). I guess it's because the phrase "Australian rules football" evokes (for me at least) a sort of casual xenophobia, whereas I don't get this from "Australian football". One never invokes the word "rules" to specify one's own native brand of football, so that doing so to specify a "foreign" code might be viewed as casually establishing one's native code as the superior code of reference against which others should be "judged".

I don't know how else to express it. Except to say I would draw a parallel between my view of the ARF label and musician David Byrne's dislike of the term "world music", a matter he discusses in this post on his website. It was written in 1999 so some of its references might be dated, and it's fairly long but I don't think it need be read in its entirety to understand the parallel I'm trying to establish.

Anyway this isn't intended as an adversarial response to your post. Rather, it got me to thinking on this a little deeper than I had really ever intended in my OP, which I suppose is a good thing.

And congratulations to the Hawthorn Hawks.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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Good response, sj-roc. Interesting points. I would guess that the "rules" part of Australian Rules Football (ARF) was inserted to suggest that the game is very much like American and Canadian football, but the rules are slightly different. This would suggest to me that things like: one or two feet in bounds on a catch; points awarded for a TD, FG, convert (for your benefit, sj-roc!); number of timeouts; motion or not before the snap, etc. To me the term ARF suggests only a slight difference from the American game, but I could be completely wrong about this, as I've never looked into the game or seen one.

The convention I like re acronyms is to spell the term out first, immediately followed by the acronym in parentheses, and thereafter to use the acronym. But, what the hey, this is a fun forum, and we don't need to set rules....
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sj-roc
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South Pender wrote:Good response, sj-roc. Interesting points. I would guess that the "rules" part of Australian Rules Football (ARF) was inserted to suggest that the game is very much like American and Canadian football, but the rules are slightly different. This would suggest to me that things like: one or two feet in bounds on a catch; points awarded for a TD, FG, convert (for your benefit, sj-roc!); number of timeouts; motion or not before the snap, etc. To me the term ARF suggests only a slight difference from the American game, but I could be completely wrong about this, as I've never looked into the game or seen one.

The convention I like re acronyms is to spell the term out first, immediately followed by the acronym in parentheses, and thereafter to use the acronym. But, what the hey, this is a fun forum, and we don't need to set rules....
The Australian game is quite different from either of the CFL or NFL games. I won't get into a big discussion since I'm not even much of an expert on it but their game is more fluid like rugby and players dress accordingly with little if any padding. TSN shows some games occasionally, and the time difference often means some strange live viewing hours for us, well into the wee hours. But the Grand Final is usually an afternoon Saturday local start which equates to a finish around midnight Friday night here so I was able to catch most of the last half last night after the CFL doubleheader, and I'll even admit having a BC boy in the game was a factor in my tuning in. I watched a bit of the game he played in (and won) two years ago and they showed a Canadian flag or two in the crowd.

There was one feature in the post-game award ceremony (which I think they do every year) that I thought really put a nice touch on the proceedings. There's the wheeled out stage for the trophy presentation to the coach and team captain much like for the Grey Cup but also, each player gets an individual medal presented to them (perhaps instead of a ring as is common in NA) before the trophy comes out. Offstage, each player is handed a championship hat, and there's a kid (about 6-12yo) wearing a jersey matching the player, number and all, who is handed the medal. Then they walk up from opposite ends onto stage together, where the player puts the hat on the kid's head and the kid puts the medal around the player's neck. Then they shake hands, leave stage as they entered, and the next player-child pair repeats the process, and so on through the entire lineup, in numerical order by player jersey number, except for the captain who goes last.

I think it's a great touch and a pretty cool way to stay connected to the kids — whose support you will need as a league in the future as the current fanbase ages.

I have no idea how these kids get selected for the honours but if I had to guess I would say that each AFL team has its formal, organised supporters' group and they're simply drawn from the winning team's group. There's no CFL/Lions analogue for these supporters' groups but the Whitecaps would have one in their Southsiders, as is more common in soccer. There has been (still is?) a Lion Backers supporters group but to my knowledge they have never had anything to do with this board and are an entirely separate entity. They don't seem to have as large a profile as the Southsiders as far as supporters' groups go, or even a web site as far as I can tell.

Re: conventions for abbreviations and acronyms, I agree that is the accepted protocol in more formal writing. I suppose I could have done likewise here but on a football chat board I thought this might be a little stiff. I might have been more so detailed if I were posting about it on say, a music chat board. Speaking of which, Tom Jones was part of the (pre/post-game?) musical entertainment for today's AFL game. Maybe he could do the Grey Cup halftime, too? LOL
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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sj-roc wrote:Speaking of which, Tom Jones was part of the (pre/post-game?) musical entertainment for today's AFL game. Maybe he could do the Grey Cup halftime, too? LOL
Migawd, thought he'd passed on years ago. Did he sing The green, green grass of home? :wink:
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notahomer
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South Pender wrote:......The convention I like re acronyms is to spell the term out first, immediately followed by the acronym in parentheses, and thereafter to use the acronym. But, what the hey, this is a fun forum, and we don't need to set rules....
I work in healthcare and acronyms are a major problem for people 'outside the loop'. I was amazed at how quickly I picked up and then started using the jargon. In documents I've prepared, I've been asked to do as you state, spell out the term, acronym in parentheses etc.... Like you said, certainly not needed in this forum for the most part.....

I caught a bit of the grand final too. The one team (wearing red/white, IIRC) was really struggling. I got the impression the only team they've struggled with is the team they lost to in yeserdays (todays?) Grandfinal.

I miss the guys in the white sportcoats and fedoras who used to be the officials making the call on whether points were scored or not........
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sj-roc
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South Pender wrote:
sj-roc wrote:Speaking of which, Tom Jones was part of the (pre/post-game?) musical entertainment for today's AFL game. Maybe he could do the Grey Cup halftime, too? LOL
Migawd, thought he'd passed on years ago. Did he sing The green, green grass of home? :wink:
Funny you should say that, because his performance at the game got him trending on twitter, which in turn led some of his unknowing fans elsewhere in the world to believe he had died.

I missed his act but hear he committed a faux pas by calling the sport "rugby". To be fair, watching AFL as a North American, I can see how you might be more inclined to think rugby rather than what we call football (as per my last post). I know TJ is Welsh but there might be something similar going on with him.

http://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/tom-jo ... 7072419065
Tom Jones’ AFL Grand Final ‘rugby’ blunder

IT’S NOT unusual for the AFL Grand Final entertainment to go horribly wrong, but Tom Jones took it to another level at the MCG today.

First, the Welsh singer mistakenly referred to the players taking part in today’s game as “rugby players” during an interview with former Hawthorn player Campbell Brown on Channel 7.

Then, if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, he appeared to refer to Brown as a “d***head” behind his back.

But to be fair, Brown might have earned it.

The ex-AFL star pulled out a pair of his undies and handed them to Jones as a reference to the countless lady fans who have hurled their lingerie at the crooner over the years.

Jones clearly wasn’t happy about it, although some are claiming he said, “Take care.”
There was another singer who performed with Jones by the name of Ed Sheeran (never heard of him), which led to some clowning based on the similarity of his name with that of the company (Sherrin) that manufactures official AFL game balls. You'll have to click the link to see that; I can't do it justice in typing.

EDIT: A video of the TJ interview:
[video][/video]
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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sj-roc
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notahomer wrote:
South Pender wrote:......The convention I like re acronyms is to spell the term out first, immediately followed by the acronym in parentheses, and thereafter to use the acronym. But, what the hey, this is a fun forum, and we don't need to set rules....
I work in healthcare and acronyms are a major problem for people 'outside the loop'. I was amazed at how quickly I picked up and then started using the jargon. In documents I've prepared, I've been asked to do as you state, spell out the term, acronym in parentheses etc.... Like you said, certainly not needed in this forum for the most part.
What I see in the popular press sometimes is they'll state something in full without juxtaposing the acronym. Then they'll start using an acronym but it sometimes doesn't initially occur until several paragraphs later by which time you've forgotten the original phrase for which it stands.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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notahomer
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sj-roc wrote:What I see in the popular press sometimes is they'll state something in full without juxtaposing the acronym. Then they'll start using an acronym but it sometimes doesn't initially occur until several paragraphs later by which time you've forgotten the original phrase for which it stands.
IKWYM :wink: I know what you mean!

The field of play and stadium is certainly something that the Australian Rules Football (AFL) is benefitting from advertisements. The jersies themselves were not so bad. I don't want to show my ignorance as I am just a casual fan who'll watch it if its on but whatever they call that centre spot where play starts after a goal or start of play, it was marked by the Toyota logo, I think. Nothing wrong with it, we're certainly marking up our fields with adverts too, its just been a topic of discussion from time to time (or thread to thread, depending on how you want to look at it.... :wink: )
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