..KICKING IT WITH THE WOMBATS…………………

By Charles Richardson in Singapore

March 28^th 2006

For those of you who aren't aware, I play a little sport known as Aussie Rules Football. Since I'm staffed abroad, I'm unable to join the Magpies in their quest to defend last year's championship, so I'm left looking for other teams to train/play with. Fortunately, Singapore is chock-full of Aussie expats so it took just a bit of Googling before I found the Singapore Wombats Football Club.

I spent a few days talking to their recruiting manager, Bill, and was set up for practice on the following Saturday. I showed up a bit nervous given that the entire team is Australian and I only have my crappy American skills. Regardless, I started to walk around, making the obligatory introductions, and asking for Bill so I could put a face to the guy I'd been communicating with. Everyone was friendly enough but I got some strange stares and comments when I asked for Bill. I assumed Bill was new or just not well liked. We kicked a bit and then had a quick meeting before getting to the heart of practice. That's when the coach announced that Bill had been killed the night before (just a few hours after sending me an email) in a motorcycle accident. Apparently the whole team already knew this. Shock, embarrassment, and sadness instantly hit me. The team was grieving and the new guy was walking around and asking for their deceased teammate. Not the best of introductions.

The practice continued on and surprisingly, I found I was able to hang with the guys. I'm not going to attribute it to my skills. More likely the fact that most of them were a bit lazy with the conditioning played a part. As is normal with all Australians, each of them had a nickname. Some of the more clever ones were; Stone Cold, Horn, Splash, Genghis, Loutopia, Rowdy, and O.C. (You don't want to know what that stands for). Of course they went to the default with my moniker, christening me Chuckie in a matter of moments. Given how much I despise the name Chuck, I am ecstatic. After practice, we grieved in typical Aussie fashion. This meant they dragged over a cooler full of beer and proceeded to get pissed.

Fast forward 2 weeks. I got an email asking if I could join the team on tour this weekend. They were playing Malaysia on Saturday and short a few players. I jumped at the chance to get a few minutes in a proper international match.

I met the team the next day at 8:30 AM and waited for the bus. 1.5 hours later it showed up. The delay would set a precedent for the entire trip. A few minor wrong turns and we were at the ground at 2:30 PM. We jumped off the bus, warmed up for 10 minutes and then hit the field. I started on the bench and was called on about 5 minutes in. I didn't come off the rest of the game so I guess I played all right. The game was a lot cleaner than the USFooty version with the ball kept off the ground for the majority of the match. I saw some great marks and some long kicking. I hesitate to say their game isn't as violent as our version, but I didn't see nearly as many tackles as I would in one of our matches. We won the game in decisive fashion 58 to 34.

The early evening consisted of meeting the Malay team at their sponsor bar, destroying a buffet, and getting a good warm up buzz going. The highlight of this pre-party? The Best On Ground for the Wombats puking into his BOG mug after chugging a beer.

We headed to a nightclub and proceeded to get toasty. The guys were all proper gentlemen and handled themselves with class and dignity. Or should I say, they were dancing on table tops, accosting other patrons, and generally causing trouble. At 4 AM I decided I needed some rest so I slipped out. Thank god I did. My roommate for the evening who was supposed to be "mentoring" me in all things Wombat. Had I stayed under his wing, I would have passed out in a strange locale, missed the bus back, lost my passport, and had to catch a flight to the border as he did.

We got on the bus the next morning and departed at 12:30 vs. 11:00 (see the trend here). We then proceeded to tour beautiful Kula Lumpur looking for my lost roommate. 2 hours later, we gave up and headed out, but not before stopping and buying $150 worth of beer for the trip home. The guys were adamant that the remaining 10 of us would drink ourselves stupid the entire ride home. This also meant that we would be stopping every 30 minutes for a restroom break since the bus had no toilet. What should have been a 5 hr trip took 9. I didn't think this was a good idea but with Aussies, you don't make a big fuss unless you want to end up drinking half the slab by yourself.

The point of the story, if there is one: Aussies are drunks who occasionally play footy...and I can't wait to go to Jakarta with them in a few weeks.

Charlie