We are the Champions, AGAIN!

Aussie Seahawk

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 23, 2015
Messages
1,694
Reaction score
183
Location
Adelaide, South Australia
I have kept forgetting to post about what is, to me, a very wonderful "elephant in the room" event, which happened late last September. My beloved Sturt Football Club (semi-professional local Aussie rules footy team) won their second successive Premiership.

BUT… I was on a coach in Europe, between Prague and the Czech/German border, when the game was on, trying to follow it on slow wifi on my brand new phone, which I was pretty clueless about. I stuffed up the time difference - it was very late in the fourth quarter when I started to follow it, when we boarded the coach. Not a live broadcast, just a score update every minute or so…

Scores were even, and kept being even, until we were suddenly winning by one point. THEN the final siren blew!

Christ, that few minutes seemed to last for years, and when it said FINAL SCORE I of course went nuts, with everyone on the coach wondering what on earth was happening! This was like winning a basketball game by a single point, I guess, and we Sturt folk to this day are haunted by being beaten by one point in 1978 in the Grand Final that year, after going 20-1 in the regular season.

The German border (apparently hardly anything to mark it) went by totally un-noticed by me.

ANOTHER delicious layer to the onion of victory... in our local footy competition, there are 8 teams like Sturt, who represent various suburban areas of the city of Adelaide, in a totally semi-professional environment. All players have jobs, or are studying, etc, and none would earn over $25,000 a year or so. Heck, the entire team salary cap is around $400,000, for a squad of 30 or so players.

BUT... there are two teams in this ten-team competition who are comprised of backup players for the two fully-professional national league teams which come from Adelaide. These players are all professionals - earning at least $70,000 a year. NOT enough to get rich, of course, but enough not to have to work.

So, on any given game day, the semi-pros arrive from jobs or study to play or train, but the pros from the two National teams arrive from rest, rehab, physio, etc.

NOTFAIR! But... we beat the bastards!!!

GO DOUBLE BLUES!!! New season starts Easter weekend; I love this time of year - beginning of autumn (slowly here - summer won't bloody give in easily), daylight saving about to end too, and maybe it is only two months before I have my first fire for the season.
 

Attachments

  • Sturt2017.jpg
    Sturt2017.jpg
    179.2 KB · Views: 1,794
OP
OP
Aussie Seahawk

Aussie Seahawk

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 23, 2015
Messages
1,694
Reaction score
183
Location
Adelaide, South Australia
Sports Hernia":1lf6e043 said:
A belated congrats! :2thumbs:

THANK YOU! It was amazing... I was "supposed" to be concentrating on being overseas, and I think that is why I stuffed up the time difference, and suddenly realised the game was almost over when we got settled on the coach from Prague to Berlin. I was just completely distracted - it was SO surreal. AND the one single POINT we won by! It is "like" winning a basketball game by a single point, I guess.

Kinda makes up for the infamous 1978 Grand Final, which we LOST by a single point.

I was, to the point of being ridiculous, totally avoiding telling any other Sturt Football Club fans I was not going to be able to go to the Grand Final, UNTIL we won the Preliminary Final, to qualify for the Grand Final. Bloody hell, I'm stupidly superstitious when it comes to this. Gave my Grand Final tickets (already pre-earned) away at a local pub, after qualifying.

On Monday, we start our attempt for that rather clunky word... a three-peat. Was accomplished a few years back by another team. We actually won 5 Premierships in a row from 1966-1970, but I did not come on board until 1969... and ridiculous this claim may sound, I had no idea I was "bandwagoning" at the time: I had no idea of previous history, when I decided to barrack for this team - I lived in what was then a remote rural area, and we had very little media coverage. I think I can be forgiven I was only nine, and DOUBLE BLUE burns in my blood to this very day.

Sounds hokey now, but it was a different world back then. When I got sent to Adelaide to boarding school in 1972, I had very little idea even who the freaking Beatles were - I was that naive, ignorant and sheltered. I'd never heard of them on the government-run local radio station, and I was not allowed to change the radio to the shitty local commercial radio station, where I imagine they WOULD have been played.

OBVIOUSLY I love my Seattle Seahawks, but my local grass-roots semi-pro footy team, Sturt Football Club, will always be my greatest love in sports, and I hope this makes some sense to whoever reads this.

DOUBLE BLUES! DOUBLE BLUES! DOUBLE BLUES!

Our nickname actually stands from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England; their respective colours... our "stadium" (well, really, it is very, very small) is at would-be the intersection of Oxford and Cambridge Streets, in my local suburb. But I tell you, our home crowd of 3-4,000 will pump out a passion and volume you would not believe. In this small scale, you would NOT want to be a visiting team, even if you only come from a few km/miles down the road.
 
Top