April 15, 2008

My fav player, Lenny Hayes.

Matthew Lappin
Part 1 |Part 3
The Uniform

The AFL uniform is as pictured above. While long sleeves are an option as exhibited in the second picture, they are very rarely worn unless on days that are quite cold.

The socks are meant to be pulled up but for most players they barely make it to the start of the game without them already around the ankles.

Many if not most/all players now wear compression tops under their jumpers in order to increase blood flow. The same goes for skin colour bike shorts. Players are permitted to wear a protective helmet - this is plastic and only covers the skull and is nothing like that of the NFL or NHL.

Once again this is very rare as there is a very macho player culture within the AFL. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single player now playing professional who regularly wears one although I’m sure someone is without me noticing. They are typically worn after a head injury. The picture above is of Justin Koschitzke, who wore one for a season because his total lack of peripheral vision constantly caused him to receive massive head collisions while on the field.

Lifelock is a company who have made it their business to protect ordinary people from identity theft.

They’re a company that’s growing rapidly, winning plaudits from the industry and gaining partnerships with prominent organisations such as the AAA New Jersey Automobile Club, Heartland Credit Union, and Ident-a-Kid.

Because of this growth, there’s lots of lifelock jobs becoming available at their dedicated employment website. It seems to be a great organisation to work for. I think it’d be cool to have a job where you didn’t just make money for a bunch of shareholders and went home at the end of the day, you actually made a difference in some people’s lives. Working for Lifelock enables someone to do that because they are all about protecting people from ID theft criminals, an area of crime that unfortunately has been growing with the advent of the internet.

Just remember, please exercise caution when choosing ID or financial related products and make sure to do your full research when selecting something like this.

Being an Aussie by birth, you often have to explain the game of AFL - otherwise known as Australian Rules Football - to a few people. Here we go.

Scoring: There’s two scores - 6 points for a goal, when you kick it through the middle of the big sticks, 1 point for a “behind”, when it goes through between the goal and the little sticks on either side. The goals are at either end of the ground.

If the ball touches someone’s hands before it goes through the goals or behind posts, it is called “touched” and is awarded a point.

It’s a common tactic for teams under severe defensive pressure to deliberately hit the ball through for a point and concede a behind.

The Length Of The Game:

AFL is divided into four 20 minute quarters, with 5 minute breaks at quarter and three quarter time and 30 minute breaks at half time.

In practise, a timekeeper keeps a countdown clock and noone at the ground is aware of how long is left in the game. There is only a clock that starts when the umpire commences each quarter, and it is never paused for any reason. So it’s only up to the spectators to speculate when the end of the game is. Quarters generally range in length from 26-31 minutes although they frequently go much longer due to factors such as injury, brawls, and a high amount of goals being scored in a particular quarter.

Part 2“>