grand final

Being in Canada, finding somewhere to watch one of Australia’s biggest annual sporting events, the Australian Rules Football Grand Final, was never going to be easy.  After a few false starts, we found a drinking establishment that claimed to know what TV channel would carry the game and, even better, was willing to put it on.  The Charles Dickens Pub was the place in question.  Sounds almost gentrified, doesn’t it?  I have even had lunch here on one occasion before and found it to be a nice, quiet local pub.

The start time for the game here was 9:30pm local time, Saturday night.  Ever heard that old Elton John song, “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)”?  Almost positive that he wasn’t thinking of sleepy ole Vancouver Island when he wrote those lyrics.

We sat on high stools up against the bar, watching a small TV up in a corner, above the bottles of spirits.  The bartender warned us that he couldn’t put the sound on, but that didn’t worry us, we were just happy to watch.  Turns out that sound or no sound wouldn’t have made any difference as the noise levels in the pub rose to a dull roar by 10pm.  The table behind us became a meeting place for a large group of 20-something, mostly male patrons.  I was pretty focused on the game but I could certainly hear that things were getting a little messy behind us.  As the game went into the 2nd quarter, some “words” had already been exchanged amongst the young bucks but up until then, they were just that, words.  And then the fists started flying.  I missed the start of proceedings (hey, I was watching the game!) but when I turned around there was a large scrum off to the left of us.  It seemed to be degenerating rapidly towards an all-in brawl until the bouncers showed up and did their job well.  This quieted things down for a little while but it was clear that testosterone levels were still elevated.  We were also baffled by the presence of the original combatants again behind us with drinks in their hands.  Turns out they were actually “friends” of sorts!

Half time arrived and we reluctantly decided that, although we wanted to see how the game would end, we didn’t want to witness how this night at the pub would end.  Now, some of you are probably thinking that this sounds like a normal Saturday night at the pub, and you may be right, but I don’t get out much.  I just wanted to watch the game without fear of being king-hit from behind.  Is that too much to ask?

In the end I had to settle for listening to the second half on an internet radio station.  Cheers to Cats supporters and commiserations to the Saints supporters.