Footy Daze 2012

I still cant believe that 2012 rugby league season has been run and won! It doesn't seem all that long ago I was at the first National Rugby League (NRL) match of the season, played at the Hunter Stadium on Thursday 1st March to see the Newcastle Knights lose in a Golden Point shoot out to the St George Illawarra Dragons. 

So it looks as though my weekends will once again seem hollow without watching 'The Greatest Game of All' every weekend and my summer days will be spent counting down the days towards the first trial matches in February.

So lets take a quick recap on my 'season on the sidelines';

10 x Newcastle Knights NRL home matches. I missed only two home game this year, the Round 8 win against the Penrith Panthers and the Round 10 loss to the North Queensland Cowboys. The low point on the Knights season came with the Round 12 loss to the Gold Coast Titans (14 -24) and the high point was the Round 19 win against the Manly Sea Eagles (32 - 6). Overall the season was a bummer with the Knights only winning 10 from 24 matches and finishing a disappointing 12th on the ladder.

3 x Newcastle Knights NSW Cup home matches. The NSW Cup is the official Reserve Grade fixture for the NRL. The Knights won all three of the matches I attended, the wins were against the Auckland Vulcans, the Windsor Wolves and the Canterbury Bulldogs. All these matches were played at Townson Oval Merewether, which would have to be one of the coldest places in Australia to watch rugby league .... brrrr!

1 x Finals Week Two match. My son and I went down to ANZ Stadium at Homebush to watch the Canberra Raiders lose to the South Sydney Rabbitohs 38 - 16. Although I do live in Newcastle and I have season tickets to the Knights, my heart is still with the Raiders who I have supported since 1983.

1 x Newcastle Rugby League Grand Final. I had a great day watching the West Newcastle Rosellas have a gutsy win against the Cessnock Goannas at Newcastle's No.1 Sportsground. I was only going for the Rosellas because their club, situated at New Lambton, has a great bistro and puts on great entertainment. Mum is a Cessnock girl so I should have gone for the Goannas, however the club at Wests is closer!


Some other highlights of the season were taking my 6 year old grand-daughter to her first rugby league game, the NSW Cup match between the Knights and the Vulcans and also taking my father to the same match. So including my son as well, who also attended, we had four generations attending the same match! Another highlight, was also sitting in the same seats all season at Hunter Stadium, freezing our bums off, catching up with Footy Bob and his family, living out the sporting highs and lows in a tribal atmosphere, with either my son or my wife at my side.

All in all it was a great year.

To me the game I follow is not about wins or losses (however I do prefer the wins), it's about getting out in the community, bonding with strangers who support the same team and building great memories to look back on in years to come.

And I hope in the years to come my grand-daughter still remembers me taking her to a freezing footy ground to watch her first match of rugby league .... and that is better than any Grand Final win!             

Oh and by the way, when going to the footy, always take your camera, even a 'point & shoot' can capture the excitement of the day!

Muscle & Muscle

On a day when religious people observe the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and chocoholics are indulging in their annual chocolate orgy, some of us in Newcastle celebrate Easter Sunday in a display of pure grunt and muscle power.


Not just any muscle, but with the toughest of them all ... the Ford Mustang, a car that celebrates big block normally aspirated  V8 engines, wide rubber, tons of chrome, 4 speed 'top loader' manual transmissions and a car the fuelled the dreams of every boy growing up in the 60's and 70's.


Newcastle was lucky enough to host the 2012 Mustang National over the Easter, with over 300 of these iconic American muscle cars from the Mustang Owners Club Association of NSW on display, including a 1982 SSP Mustang, a Mustang Ute and every kind of Mustang in between.


Out of all the Mustangs on display my favourites were the beautiful 1969 Shelby 350 GT, the last of  iconic Carroll Shelby produced Mustangs and the awesome 'Big Red', a 1967 Shelby GT 500 with the massive 428ci (7 Litre) engine to make this beast the mother of all Mustangs!    

But there was not just motoring muscle on display in Newcastle on Easter Sunday ... playing at the nearby Ausgrid Stadium was the Round 6 clash of the National Rugby League competition, where human muscle was on display. The local team, the Newcastle Knights were playing the Parramatta Eels in a dour struggle. After 80mins of hard slog in warm autumn sunshine the Newcastle Knights were eventually victorious 14 - 6 and kept themselves in the hunt for the finals come September. 


So even if you can't play Rugby League, or don't own a Mustang, you can still come to Newcastle and pursue some other leisurely such as whale watching, wine tasting or just soaking up the sun on some of  Australia's best beaches .... beats sitting at home sucking eggs!  
  

A State Of Origin Story

One of Australia's biggest annual sporting fixtures is the Rugby League State Of Origin series, which is contested by the best representative Rugby League teams in the world, New South Wales (The Blues or Cockroaches) and Queensland (The Maroons or Canetoads). This year the opening game was being hosted by NSW at the ANZ Stadium (Olympic Park - Homebush).


Now normally I don't get to go to the State Of Origin games, due to the fact thay are played mid-week, they involve lots of travel and it is very expensive. So for the most part, like a lot of others, I'm usually confined to watching the game on television


However, not this year.


As luck would have my son was able to score some free tickets to the game, a series that promised to be the start of a NSW resurgence after a four series losing streak. 


Unfortunately someone forgot to tell the weather gods!


I decided to travel down to Sydney early to hopefully have lunch around the harbour, read a good book and take some wonderful pictures (using my Sanyo S1275 camera) of some of the stunning icons of Sydney, such as the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, before heading out to the game.


However, it rained.


It didn't just rain, it poured rain all afternoon, without a break and nearly wrecked my plans for a photographic stroll along the harbour . However, being a keen photographer I decided to go for a walk down to the harbour anyway and hoped that I would score a break in the weather. I did manage a few shots from under the relative protection of a fragile umbrella, but in the end I had to give up, I was soaked and the wind threatened to turn my flimsy canvas protection inside out.
I was so disappointed, it's not often I get to travel down to Sydney and when I do, I really do love to get out  with either of  my cameras, walk the streets and try to capture its stunning beauty. On this trip however, it was a wash out.


So it was off to Game 1 of the 2010 State Of Origin series and as luck would have it, it kept on raining. Although the it continued to rain (it did stop15 minutes into the game), the game itself was still a high quality contest and after 80 minutes of outstanding Rugby League, the Canetoads held out to win 28 - 24 and take a 1 nil lead in the 3 match series.


While the day was a washout, the game, and the experience was one not to missed. The day has also inspired me to book a weekend in Sydney, wander along to the northern shore with my cameras and try to capture some of the stunning beauty of Sydney Harbour.


Just have to make sure it doesn't rain next time!      

Junior Footy In June

Oh brrr, one of the less joyous responsibilities of being a Grandparent is having to stand around on windswept footy fields & watch our Grandkids go out to do their best for us! Don't get me wrong, I love watching the kids doing their chosen sport, but sometimes I wish that they had a penchant for ten pin bowling or darts! Oh well, perhaps I'll be able to convince them of the joys of these two sports as they get older.

These are pictures of Josh competing against the Blue Haven Raiders. Unfortunately on this occasion the boys lost, however Josh did get to score a try for his frozen Grandparents.

Better luck next time guys :)