It's been a soggy two weeks or so. Soccer has been repeatedly cancelled, so Marcus has been going a little stir-crazy. We had an early warning that due to the state of grounds, last weekend's games would be off regardless of weather, so I decided to take advantage of a free Saturday and take Marcus to the football with my Dad. As it happened it was reasonably mild and sunny, a pleasant day for sitting out in the open and watching a fairly unimportant football game.
We went to Bellerive to see mighty Clarence play lowly Hobart. The football grounds are generally all mudbaths too at the moment, but thanks to the bazillions of dollars spent on it, Bellerive drains beautifully. It merits the money because it is actually an international Test cricket ground. The fact you can go along with about 300 other people and watch 36 blokes run all over it in studded boots seems pretty amazing, but the same happens at most Australian cricket grounds in winter.
You can even go out on the famous turf in the breaks between quarters and kick the footy around yourself - one of the things that local footy has over the AFL. (The others are affordable food, easy parking and ... well that's about it really). Local ABC TV were covering the game with two cameras, so while Marcus and I capered about on field I sucked in my gut and tried to look as sporty as possible.
Hobart are the Tigers and wear the Richmond guernsey, so of course Marcus and I were determined to support them, but they are a bit of a hapless outfit. (Even more so than Richmond). They started fairly brightly but by half time they were about five goals adrift of Clarence (who are the Roos but wear the white/red Sydney guernsey). The second half was worse - with about five minutes left Clarence had kicked another 10 goals to one. Hobart squeezed in one more before full time mercifully came. Final score 20.15 (135) to 7.8 (50).
The crowd was so tiny that the fella with the winning raffle ticket numbers just carried them around on a little board and showed it to the spectators one by one. The sprinkling of Tiger diehards would have probably added up to about 80 if clumped together. For the Clarence faithful it was about as exciting as watching a training run. As we filed out of the ground, past the statue of Boonie, there was a distinct lack of buzz. Even the bloke who won the raffle didn't look too thrilled at having to carry home his new, cheap, vacuum cleaner. But the three of us enjoyed our day out.
We went back over to Mum and Dad's new place for a cup of tea and some post-game analysis. Mum gave Marcus half a bottle of fizzy drink, and sent the rest home with us for Michael, along with a little choccie each. Ensuring kids get a regular top-up of sugar is such a classic Grandma thing isn't it?
No comments:
Post a Comment