My Sons First Footy Game

I took my 3 yr old to his first footy game yesterday. It's an annual event for me, and has been for the last 17 years. Although Parramatta don't play in Canberra every year, whenever they do I am religiously there. I took my daughter a couple of years back and she was freaked out by the noise and the people. A year later she was enjoying the game and waving to the mascots. This year it was my sons turn to be blooded into footy culture. Bearing in mind his short attention span, and the fact that it was 8.6 degrees on a cool Sunday arvo in Canberra, I was just hoping he wouldn't want to go home after 10 minutes, but I was pleasantly surprised when for the first half he just sat beside me and watched the game and looked out for Victa the Viking. I had to get him a jumper and shorts. We purchased these last year in anticipation of his first game. He has been avoiding wearing the jumper, but maybe now he'll get used to it. The game was a pretty good one. We were really close to the action, in the front row near the 10 metre line and it was good to see the players so close up. Parra got a couple of awesome tries in the first half and we were leading at the break. Look at how excited he is :) You don't realise until you take kids to the footy how important the mascots and cheerleaders are. It creates excited and interest for the kids when they might otherwise be as bored as batshit. I mean, when Parra are carting the ball up and the referee blows a holding down penalty, the kids don't really get what's going on. Fortunately, Victa isn't such a bad guy and came around and gave Hi 5's and handshakes to the little fans and it was fun to see their reactions. My daughter was always looking out for the cheerleaders (as was Daddy) and they gave the kids Hi 5's whenever they came past. The Eels may have gone down yesterday to a gutsy Raiders side, but Ewan had fun and managed to keep himself warm by running around outside after the game. As opposed to my Daughter... ...who was just cold. Hopefully it'll be the first of many many games for him, although if I believe what he said to me yesterday ("Daddy, it's my go to go out there"), then maybe he'll be actually playing instead of watching! Oh...and by the way, all these photos were taken with my new mobile phone. The Sony-Ericsson K750i. It kicks arse.

Posted by Mick @ 7/18/2005 01:42:00 pm