Fandom

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The day before yesterday, I was stuck in traffic next to a limousine following a hearse, presumably on their way to a funeral. When I pulled up next to the hearse, I looked at the coffin in the back. It was draped with a West Coast Eagles* flag! As a Sooner fan who grew up hearing the words to our fight song ("...I'm Sooner born and Sooner bred, and when I die I'll be Sooner dead!"), I thought this was both hilarious and relatable. RIP anonymous West Coast fan.

A football note for foreign readers: The West Coast Eagles are our local, professional Australian Football League (AFL) team, and they're the team I've chosen to follow. Australian rules football, much more commonly called "footy*", is a full contact sport with 18 players on each team. The game is played on an oval-shaped field (like cricket! Which you probably also did not know), and looks kinda almost like rugby if you squint. The ball is mainly advanced by drop-kicking, and the field is ginormous, so AFL players are very good at targeted kicking. This makes footy players pretty ideal for American football punters, as people are increasingly recognizing. The secondary way of passing the ball is by holding it in one hand and striking it with the other, sort of like a volleyball serve. Under no circumstances can the ball be thrown in any direction. Points are scored by kicking the ball through a pair of upright goal posts (6 points) or through either pair of flanking goalposts (1 point).


*You have to be a bit careful with the word "footy" as it can mean any kind of "football" (rugby, soccer, AFL, and to a lesser extent, American "gridiron" football). However, different regions definitely have their preferred conventions as to which kind of footy it typically means in their area. We're an AFL region.

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