Show 514 Saturday 29 September

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Today we went to a football game at Acadia University’s stadium.
The game is called football in Canada. In New Zealand we call it gridiron or American football. I’d never seen a football game before so I was pretty excited about going.

I was really surprised that such a small university even has a stadium. And it’s not just like a field with a few chairs by it ... it’s an actual full-on stadium with a shop and a box office. Universities are not things I usually associate with sport, but apparently it’s a North American thing.

The guy from the student paper invited us to sit with him and he explained some of the rules to me which was nice.

Acadia was playing the Huskies, a team from a university in Halifax called Saint Mary’s.

Acadia scored first. A try is worth 6 points. Except that it’s not called a try it’s called a touchdown - which is kind of funny, since the ball doesn’t actually have to touch the ground.

A conversion is one point and a field goal three points ... and there are other ways to score points too.

The people in front of us were yelling stuff to the opposite team, which was very entertaining. They also cheered their team.

Let’s go Axemen. Let’s go Axemen.

The red and blue above the rest,
Above the rest.
Our teams are fighting,
And they are out to win the fray!
Well, I should say,
We’ve got the team. BOOM! BOOM!
We’ve got the steam. BOOM! BOOM!
For this is old Acadia’s day.

Some girls danced at half time.
These are the Acadia dancers.
And these are the Saint Mary’s dancers.

One man took his passion to a whole new level.

This was the first game on the new field. This field used to be grass but it’s now made of synthetic grass filled with sand, rubber, and reground sports shoe material.
At first I was shocked at the thought of being tackled on artificial grass but I jumped on it and it actually felt pretty soft.

We have to run to the football.
Everybody hear me on that?
Let’s get to the ball!

Another thing that surprised me that there are about a zillion players on each team, and they keep running on and off the field. Come on ... if you’re going to play sport you might as well play the whole game.

Oh and the time too, I first heard the game was 60 minutes long, with 20 minutes for half time - which sounds like a reasonable length. But, no, it’s actually way longer because they keep stopping the clock. We stayed for over two hours and the game was only three quarters of the way through.

I decided I just couldn’t handle watching sport any longer so we called it a day. When we left I’m pretty sure Acadia was winning, but I just checked the score on the net and the final score was 40-12 to the Huskies. Wow.

notes

The red and blue ... This is the Acadia song. It's on page 154 of the ASU student handbook.
I think it's called a fight song.
In the book, we've got the steam is before we've got the team, but the guys sitting in front of us sang it the other way around.

zillion noun (informal) a very large number

way adverb (informal) a lot, much, really

handle verb manage or cope with (a situation, person, or problem)

music

show start
artist: AdHoc
album: Toutes directions
track: La note en cage
from: Annecy, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

other music
artist: XL Ant
album: XL Ant
track: Balbalama5
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

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