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Well, so almost ends the footy season. All that remains is for England to win the rugby league and the Wallabies to win the rugby union.
Of course there is the A-League ahead but seriously, the only men who play footy in the summer are those brutes in the north of England who just completed their season at a sold out Old Trafford.
Reports were that the Super League grand final on Saturday night between the Leeds Rhinos and the Wigan Warriors resulted in a world record of pulses per minute, beating the former record held by some Mexican drive through in Cancun.
Funnily enough, the same night at the Etihad also in Manchester, there was a world record for number of miserable Englishmen taking out their frustrations on a South American nation in a non-Falklands dispute.
I digress.
Having just completed my second full footy season back home after a 13 year foray into the best that Europe could offer, dare I say it, I think the only full AFL match I watched in 2015 was the big dance.
And upon learning I only watched one game in 2015, it prompted me to either sort out my priorities for 2016 early – or dig deeper and question what’s missing.
I understand that there are a few factors that would be cause for such a lack of AFL airtime on my respectfully large flatscreen this year. A new wife that wants to do things together on a weekend for one. And two, the Bombers really are atrocious.
Three, my new found love of the Sharkies.
I attended six Sharks matches this year and turned down free tickets to the Swans home semi final to party hardy with the locals at the Cronulla RSL.
Unfortunately the Cowboys snuffed out any hint of a party that night, in the same way the Kangaroos punched the guts out of any Adam Goodes swansong. Nothing lost, nothing gained.
But really, what I really think was the issue for 2015 was that the AFL was so bloody boring.
Sure, I live in Sydney and had I been living in Melbourne I would have gone to no less than all local Bombers fixtures, training sessions, press conferences, court hearings and airport check ins for away fixtures. However living in league heartland and escaping that all encompassing media coverage, I have started to view AFL in a different light.
League, its 80 minutes with a quarter hour half time break, is frenetic. It is powerful, strategical and skilful.
All these attributes can be found in Aussie rules too. However I find myself more than happy tuning in at half time of the AFL, checking the score to see if the game is worth completing before either getting myself a frothie and settling on the lounge or packing my pipe and opening my latest hardback.
Nothing lost, nothing gained.
The point is, the game seems to be too long. Moments of brilliance are irregular and more commonly the ball is delivered into flooded 50-metre circles with clean possession less common than what I remembered. Has my patience run out?
Now just because I support the Bombers and Sharks – don’t let that mislead you about what I get up to on weekends and classify ‘entertainment’. I used to be a regular at Swans games in the past. I like to see them do well when the Bombers are not.
I fear there is a few years of cheering the Red and the White before I have much to cheer about in my Red and Black. A live event at an AFL game is absorbing, even in Sydney – well at the SCG at least.
Why didn’t I go to any of the other Swans games that were to choose from in 2015? It would have to be something to do with the price.
So here I am left at the end of the season. I am too cheap to spend the dough to go to a team that is not my number one and too busy watching rugby league on TV because – to be honest – it’s pretty damn good.
Can I really be the only one? Am I the only one that has found 2015 AFL a bit on the nose?
What am I missing? What is it that I should be looking for in 2016 that will bring back the love no matter how many premierships the Hawks win?
Help me AFL Roarers, what have I been missing?
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