Counter point. Australia has a great football culture, with a strong following of Rugby League, Aussie Rules, Rugby Union and Soccer. American football really doesn’t have any following outside of the US, except maybe as a novelty event

Football is the biggest sport in Australia, it’s just Australian football not US football.

US football gets played a bit at a local amateur level and we’ve had a number of punters in the NFL, plenty more in College Football and are starting to get a few more positional players in the league.

I was very happy to see my favorite (Utah) Jazz-man, Joe Ingles, on the Australia team!

Delly playing well would have hurt the Deadspin staff right in their collective butt for 40 minutes. He’s been outstanding in the Olympics so far. You can all continue to pretend he’s a hockey goon who was mistakenly signed to an NBA roster; he is not.

I grew up down the street from Mason Cox. Incredibly odd/awesome sporting career. Only played soccer in High School, then went to Oklahoma State and made the basketball team (and actually got good minutes), now is having a helluva year in AFL after one year in their developmental league. Freaking awesome

Nah bouncing an AFL football isn’t all that hard. Pretty easy really. The good part of the 2nd goal was the way he looked around and knew he had time and space to run in, then steadied up after the bounce and kicked the goal. It wasn’t really all that hard, but it was such an important time in the game and the ease of…

Australian Rules is not derived from rugby in any way. They used to think it evolved from Gaelic football but apparently this is also incorrect. It started as a way of keeping cricketers fit over winter.

Granted I haven’t tossed an AFL ball in ten or so years (haven’t been around too many Aussie’s recently), but it’s easier in the sense that the ball is designed for the possibility of a bounce, whereas a football’s edges are quite pointy. But that doesn’t mean you can control where it’s going. It’s slightly flatter on…

It's actually not that hard. You just throw it in at about a 45 degree angle and physics will put it right back into your hand. We used to have competitions to see who could go the longest amount without messing up but stopped when we realized it was going to be like 50-60 throws at the minimum.

I was excited to hear about an American making an impression in Aussie Football. Then I found out he plays for Collingwood. Because of this, Mason Cox is dead to me.

This looks like a good ass sport

Pretty cool seeing some AFL coverage on Deadspin. I got into the West Coast Eagles when I was in Oz but it’s hard to follow the sport now that I’m back in the US.

They’ve held a combine the last several years in the US targeting college basketball players and some football players. Jason Holmes just was promoted up to St. Kilda this weekend. Another former basketball player out of Morehead State.

Big deal. The LAPD gets in kicks after the siren several times a week.

Aussie Rules not rugby. And they do have some players coming here as punters in the past decade or so.

the world wide web is not the same thing as the internet and was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, he’s British. Sewing Machines: Thomas Saint (1790) British. Bicycle: Kirkpatrick Macmillian, British. Steam Train: Ricjard Trevithick: British. Pneumatic Tyre: Robert William Thompson: British. Lightbulb: Joseph Swan:…

Pretty good, but so are the telephone, the world wide web, the pneumatic tyre, steam engines, vaccines, the lightbulb, bicycles, tractors, the television, jet engines, DNA profiling, text messages, sewing machines and radio to name just a few things invented in my own country...

Aussie Rules isn’t based on American Football, in fact the first game of Aussie Rules was played 11 years before the first recorded game of American Football. Both evolved from early forms of rugby anyway. Why is Americans think they originated everything?

In Aussie rules, if a player catches a kicked ball after the ball has traveled a certain distance, it’s called a mark. After catching a mark, the player then gets to take a free kick. This kick just happened after time expired.

“Byzantine”? In the NBA, if you are fouled at the buzzer you shoot the free throws. In the NFL, a penalty on the last play awards an untimed down. In soccer, on a free kick in stoppage time the referee will not blow the whistle until the kick is attempted.