Being in another country during the fall semester definitely has its pros and cons. The biggest con is missing out on the soccer, volleyball and basketball games at St. Edward’s University.

Having to cheer on some of the top Div. II U.S. men’s and women’s teams from another country kinda stinks, but it’s nice to be able to brag to the other schools here about how successful our teams are.

In order to get my fill of sports here in Australia, I started watching the Australian Football League (AFL) games on TV. The AFL games, also known as “Aussie Rules Football” or simply “Footy” are essentially a combination of rugby, soccer and American football—pretty rad if you ask me.

On Aug. 14, all of us study abroad students went on an excursion to Perth to watch a Fremantle Dockers—a professional footy team—play.

I had seen half of a game on TV prior to that day, but still I was incredibly confused. At that time, all I understood was that there were giant men in short shorts running around tackling each other, kind of like a huge game of keep-away.

(By the way, the Dockers got demolished in that game… but that’s just a minor detail.)

But thanks to my new Australian friends, I now semi-understand what is going on during the games.

Though the players are allowed to tackle each other, there are no helmets, shoulder pads or other mandatory protective gear. The ball and field are both an oval shape. There can be up to 18 players from each team on the oval. The positions are not compulsory but are similar to soccer; they include forwards, defenders and midfielders. There are also wingmen, a center and three followers: a ruckman, ruck-rover and rover.

There are four 20 quarters and a halftime of the same length. In order to move the ball across the oval, players can kick it, make a handball pass that, to me looks like an underhand punching motion, or run with the ball as long as they bounce it or touch it to the ground every 15 meters.

A team gets six points (a goal) if players kick the ball through the uprights—middle poles on both ends of the oval called through which the ball needs to pass through in order to score, like in American football when a team kicks a field goal. If the ball passes through either of the uprights on the left or the right the team gets one point.

Although I have only been able to attend one of the live games, I try to watch them on TV. The most exciting game I’ve watched was the Grand Final where the Western Bulldogs unexpectedly beat the Sydney Swans. The Swans were favored to win because they have a history of success. The Bulldogs, on the other hand, had not been in a Grand Final since 1961. Remarkably, the Bulldogs ended up winning, earning their second Premiership (the Australian equivalent of the Super Bowl) ever; their first was in 1954.