NOTE: this is a satirical article and unashamedly biased towards rugby league. If any Victorians are offended, send your hate mail to: admin@tryfollowingrealfooty.com.au.
On Thursday night (June 11), the AFL season resumes, meaning Victorians will again pretend that other football codes don’t exist, and tell each other that Australian Rules Football is the greatest sport since cavemen learnt to throw rocks to each other.
Rugby league fan Harry Ellcat, born and raised in Canberra before moving to Melbourne for work two years ago, is dreading it.
“Here we go again! Get ready for months of stupid Victorians referring to their precious aerial ping pong as ‘footy’, and the media slobbering over any player who kicks it over 50 metres, as long as they play for a Melbourne team.”
Mr Ellcat is a devoted Raiders fan and watches all eight NRL games every weekend on the Kayo app.
“Channel Nein are hopeless down here. They stick the real footy on Gem and cut to a movie as soon as the game’s over. What If I wanted to watch Nein’s post-game shows? I wouldn’t, because they’re self-indulgent rubbish, but I’d like to have the option.”
Mr Ellcat is also dreading going back to work when the AFL starts.
“I’m going to buy some fancy noise-cancelling headphones so I don’t have to listen to my co-workers rabbit on about which player kicked the most goals without getting tackled, or who got the most points for missing. At least in real footy there’s some decent hits.”
While Mr Ellcat’s co-workers have tried to get him to ‘adopt’ an AFL team, he’s resisted.
“I thought about jumping on the GWS bandwagon as they play a few games in Canberra, but that made it worse. It has to be a Victorian team. I can’t be bothered doing that.”
Mr Ellcat’s attempts to convert his co-workers to The Greatest Game of All have failed.
“While I love my Raiders, I go to as many Storm games as I can, because footy’s footy. I tried to invite my co-workers to a few games, but they don’t care about going to ‘the Rugby.’ I try to tell them that it’s not ‘rugby’, that league and union are two different games, but they never listen.”
For now, Mr Ellcat will continue watching real footy, with occasional weekends back home to watch Raiders games, until summer starts.
“At least then we can agree on how great cricket is and how boring tennis is.”
