Loose men everywhere

Sorry, pinched that title from a book by John Harms. It sort of fits, though. Today kiddies, for no apparent reason, I thought that I would demonstrate the difference between the American national psyche and the Australian national psyche using football as the exemplar.

In U.S. football, they have a man for every job. Every man knows how to do that job and does it extremely well. These jobs have evolved over a period of time so that they fit together seamlessly, allowing complex plans to be made and executed with confidence. The receiver knows how many paces to run before he turns and is hit on the chest by a pass from the quarterback who also has his moves calculated to the inch. The defense is likewise organized with military precision. When everything goes well it is truly beautiful to watch, poetry in motion, in fact. When it doesn't go according to plan, well..., it isn't so pretty. Nobody, or at least very few people, seem to be able to adapt to the changed circumstances all that well. The receiver gets hit in the belly instead of the chest and fumbles; the commentators are tolerant, perhaps blaming the QB (unless he was being pressured by the defense).They have teams for attack, teams for defense, even teams for when they're not sure. I remember when Darren Bennett went over to play for the San Diego Whatevers; he kicked (punted?) a ball, which was caught by one of the other mob, who got through the first line of San Diego defense so Bennett tackled him. The commentator nearly tossed his taddies over the microphone. I've got an idea that Bennett at some stage managed to get his hands on the ball after a kick and ran with it, possibly even passing it to somebody else; but that may be one of those 'false memories' they talk about.

Aussie Rules on the other hand, has a one-in-all-in sort of a feel to it. Unless you've been watching it for a while you would think that there is absolutely no strategic thinking involved whatsoever. There are specialists on the team, but no job is so specifically 'your job' that I can't do it at a pinch. There are very few set plays and those that exist, exist only in the 'broad stroke' stage of development. Everybody does what they see as the best thing to do at the time they see it, there are no 'time-outs to explain your idea to anybody. This results in a much more 'messy' game at times, but one in which any player can be the star, not only of the game, but of the team over a period of the game. It's also a game which is a lot more 'fun' to watch and play, even the absolute champions look like they're enjoying themselves.

One more anecdote before I go; Peter Fitzsimmons (sp?) ex-Wallaby and media smug person played gridiron at a high school level in the states. He was the bloke who stands in front of the QB at the start of each play and stops the QB from getting tackled. Fitzy and the QB didn't get along all that well as Fitzy couldn't understand why the QB was necessarily the star of every team and the QB in question was a bit snotty about it. One day when the defensive player in front of Fitzy was particularly large, Fitzy took a step to the left and let the tackler through. As they were scraping the QB on to a stretcher Fitzy lent over and said "See what happens when I don't do my job?"