Here comes the footy!
16-Oct-2009 12:40 PM

It’s a game of four quarters, long kicks, high flying ‘marks’ and slick ‘handballs’.

It kicks off and restarts with a ‘bounce-down’ in a circular centre in an oval-shaped field.

When the ball goes out, it is thrown in backwards by a boundary umpire.

There is no off-side and players chase each other up and down the field trying to be where the football is and where an opposing player isn’t.

Goals, worth six points, are scored by kicking the ball through two tall central sticks at opposing ends of the oval; miss them to either side, and you score a point better known as a ‘behind’.

Goals are uniquely indicated by a white-coated individual pumping his or her arms forward simultaneously with fingers pointed toward the field of play (points, by just one thrusting arm and finger). Sometimes the football is bounced as in basketball, kicked long as in rugby, dribbled as in soccer, and players tackled and shepherded as in American gridiron.

But Australian Rules Football is none and all of these. Best recognised for its ‘marking’ and ‘handballing’, it is just simply ‘footy’ and it is here to stay - thanks to the launching of AFL Fiji in Suva on Friday night.

The new sporting code is being organised by enthusiastic locals led by Australians, Andrew Cadzow, AFL Asia Pacific Development Manager, Damian Ames, Chairman AFL Fiji, and Carla Di Pasquale, AFL Fiji Programs Coordinator.

Attending the launch at the Holiday Inn will be Fiji born Australian Football stars, David Rodan and Alipate Carlile, both of the Port Adelaide Football Club.

Also present will be the AFL Fiji Committee, and members of the Melbourne-based, Western Bulldogs AFL Club, who are conducting talent identification clinics in Suva.

Principals and PMAC Coordinators of various Suva secondary schools participating in the clinics along with guest, James Batley, Australian High Commissioner to Fiji, will also be attending. The aim of AFL Fiji is to offer young people another opportunity to show what they are made of, to work as a team, to achieve self-discipline, to excel at physical and mental skills, and to work for a better future.
In coming weeks, AFL Fiji will organize teams for a local competition. That process begins with an inter-school carnival to be held at Cathedral Secondary School this coming Diwali Monday, 19 October. From there will come selection for a national team to host and compete in a Pacific-wide ‘Oceania Cup’ to be held in Suva in December.
Beyond that, the horizon is limitless for kids who master the art of a ‘mark’ (a free-kick ‘paid’ by the ‘umpire’), a ‘handball’ (propelling the ball with a clenched fist while holding it in the palm of the other hand), and a ‘shepherd’ (that’s where you better watch out!).
This is an exciting time for Fiji. Somewhere in the villages, settlements and towns of our sport-loving nation is a boy studying, running, and working towards excellence and stardom in the new ‘footy’ code. We don’t know who he is, but he’s out there and it is the mission of AFL Fiji to find him and offer him opportunities to do so – he could be your son.