At the moment some of our major sports teams are still playing in empty stadiums but the games are being televised. I believe ESPN is showing them.
The main sports are Rugby League and Australian Rules Football (AFL). Might also be some soccer.
League for those not familiar with it uses similar shaped ball as the NFL. Oh wait, so does AFL. Anyway RL is the one where a few guys have moved to USA to try out for NFL but soon came back as our guys are only allowed to pass backwards so tended to get confused running forward to catch it from a guy behind them.
Now for American viewers if you are going to watch RL you will need to pick a team to support. If you are in Texas or any cowboy / Western type state you should probably pick a Queensland team. We have the Broncos (Brisbane), Cowboys (Townsville, up North) and Titans (Gold Coast). If your NFL team normally loses most of their games you might not want to choose the Titans ^&grin.
Most of the NRL teams are based in Sydney and have exotic names like the Eels, Tigers, Sharks, Roosters. Russell Crowes team is called the Rabbitohs. Now if you normally support the Patriots (George pay attention !) you should support the Manley Sea Eagles as they are the team everybody else dislikes. If you have a thing for Vikings then the Canberra Raiders might be your team but bear in mind their major sponsor is a Chinese telephone company not so popular elsewhere. Victoria has one Melbourne team called the Storm but under no circumstances should you support them as they have a habit of winning the competition a bit too much. In fact they were stripped of two premierships a few years ago due to salary cap breaches. Their fans are all still in therapy because of it.
I mentioned the salary cap. It is $9.8 million for the whole team ! Or not much more than US$5 million.
The top 8 teams at the end of the season play to win the Grand Final. There is also State of Origin which is best of three between Queensland and New South Wales.
Now having never watched a game of aerial ballet I will leave that up to somebody like Wayne to explain. However for the record the Brisbane team is called the Lions. Don't let him and Obee trick you into supporting Perth teams. If you are into cocaine then I suspect the Eagles might be your team {sm4} I will however say there must be a reason why nobody else in the world plays AFL although the Irish apparently come close. I don't mean the Boston Irish, I mean the real Irish.
Not sure if ESPN shows cricket but it must really be the end of the world if an American sports fan is watching cricket. Oh wait, you guys actually watch baseball so it does involve a bat and running after whacking the ball as far as you can and hoping nobody catches it. Try not to get too excited if one guy scores over 100 runs as it is not quite the same as a home run.
... so many movies and documentaries on that service I can try to catch up on.
