G'day from the USA!

[felis scalpere]

Hi all!

I'm a massive Geelong Cats supporter, originally from Brisbane, Australia, but living and working in the Fairfax, VA, area of the US. It's been "interesting" to get up at 2am, 3am, 4am, or whatnot, to watch the topsy-turvy 2023 season of the Cats, but I guess one is still bathing in the emotive afterglow of the 2022 premiership glory!

Don't follow any other footy code (AFL floats my boat nicely in footy terms), but I do keep an eye on the Aussie test cricket team ... as well as WWE/AEW - aka fun escapism! I also look out for happenings in country Australian football back home Down Under (the leagues along the Murray and in the Riverina always seem interesting enough).

Looking forward to the chats with you all. GO CATS!

Felis Scalpere (roughly translates into "catscratch").

 

[rapidfire7]

Hey mate welcome!

What made you pick the Cats living up in Brisbane? I'm from Melbourne, and picked the Cats as kid for some unknown reason really, even though I am from a long line of Collingwood supporters haha.

It sure has been an up and down season for us as you say. How do you see things going for us for the rest of the year?

Like you, Aussie Rules is the only code which I follow a team and feel any real passion for.

Cheers

 

[felis scalpere]

Hey mate welcome!

What made you pick the Cats living up in Brisbane? I'm from Melbourne, and picked the Cats as kid for some unknown reason really, even though I am from a long line of Collingwood supporters haha.

It sure has been an up and down season for us as you say. How do you see things going for us for the rest of the year?

Like you, Aussie Rules is the only code which I follow a team and feel any real passion for.

Cheers

G'day, and thanks for the welcome!

I became a Cats supporter growing up in Brisbane by chance. I watched a Channel 7 Cats vs Bears match, and a certain bloke wearing the #5 jersey naturally caught my eye. Thinking to myself, "I should watch this amazing Ablett guy and his team," I got hooked onto supporting Geelong - with all the amazing ups and downs that entails (it feels good having seen 4 flags, but 1989 still hurts!). Incidentally, it probably helped a bit that the local Australian football team in Ipswich were, too, nicknamed the Cats.

It was great to support Geelong during the late 1980s and early 1990s with all the amazing players they had: Ablett Snr., Stoneham, Couch, Bairstow, Brownless, the Hockings, Hinkley, the whole lot! Went to a Bears vs Cats game at Carrara in 1990 with a schoolmate of mine (a Tigers supporter, but whose parents with even keener Cats supporters than me), and it was cool to see Ablett perform his footballing magic tricks even on a quiet-ish nice (... still puzzling about how he grabbed that mark from the wrestle with Mark Zanotti in the goalsquare!?!?!).

I can definitely appreciate how influential families can be on footy team support growing up (wonder what your Pies supporting family thought of your support for Geelong?!). It was awesome for me to be a graduate at uni with a supervisor who was a Cats-loving supervisor; good times chatting about the Geelong teams both yesterday and today!

The rest of the 2023 season makes me feel pretty uneasy lol. Will live in hope for winning the last two games (and, yep, will get up at an ungodly hour to watch), but the up-and-down season so far can make even a diehard feel uncertain. Fingers crossed!

GO CATS!

 

[Angus Young]

Hi mate, welcome!

 

[felis scalpere]

Hi mate, welcome!

Thank you very much, and g'day back! You'll know that the Hawks and Cats have a fierce rivalry that won't abate anytime soon ... you must be happy to see the Hawk wins over recent weeks!

 

[PerthBoy86]

G'day, must be interesting talking about AFL to people you know there. I'm sure you've introduced many to our great sport. Been to Virginia, beautiful part of the states, very green. What brought you over there? A Geelong fan from Brisbane, now I've heard it all lol.

 

[felis scalpere]

G'day, must be interesting talking about AFL to people you know there. I'm sure you've introduced many to our great sport. Been to Virginia, beautiful part of the states, very green. What brought you over there? A Geelong fan from Brisbane, now I've heard it all lol.

Hiya! Yeah it is incredibly "interesting" (if I could put it that way!) to talk to folks over here in the US about AFL and Australian football. Funny to get the glassy-eyed stares when I try to explain the rules even at a basic level, and I totally befuddled a bunch of students a couple of months ago when I handpassed (AFL-style) an American football. There is a small US AFL league here, I'm guessing mainly expatriates and just folks wanting to try something curious and novel to them, but I haven't seen any of their games. This season it's just me grumbling to my wife when Geelong have been losing games (too many for my liking!).

Virginia is pretty good, and I'm getting used to all the quirks of living in the US. I'm in Fairfax working as an academic.

Yeah, I often get that reaction when people try to reconcile being (a) from Brisbane but (b) supporting Geelong. I guess all of our wrinkles and quirks makes life interesting in the end

 

[PerthBoy86]

Hiya! Yeah it is incredibly "interesting" (if I could put it that way!) to talk to folks over here in the US about AFL and Australian football. Funny to get the glassy-eyed stares when I try to explain the rules even at a basic level, and I totally befuddled a bunch of students a couple of months ago when I handpassed (AFL-style) an American football. There is a small US AFL league here, I'm guessing mainly expatriates and just folks wanting to try something curious and novel to them, but I haven't seen any of their games. This season it's just me grumbling to my wife when Geelong have been losing games (too many for my liking!).

Virginia is pretty good, and I'm getting used to all the quirks of living in the US. I'm in Fairfax working as an academic.

Yeah, I often get that reaction when people try to reconcile being (a) from Brisbane but (b) supporting Geelong. I guess all of our wrinkles and quirks makes life interesting in the end

I met an American I was staying in a hostel with in a GC. He was travelling to Melbourne so I offered to show him round (I'm from Perth but live here now). We went to an AFL game and I explained some of the rules to him. Our sport really is unique. Yeah I bet they'd never seen anyone do that to a ball before lol. Have you got into American football? It seems complicated with lots of rules.

Yeah wouldn't mind seeing Aussie rules gain popularity outside Aus. Would love to visit the States again sometime too.

 

[rapidfire7]

G'day, and thanks for the welcome!

I became a Cats supporter growing up in Brisbane by chance. I watched a Channel 7 Cats vs Bears match, and a certain bloke wearing the #5 jersey naturally caught my eye. Thinking to myself, "I should watch this amazing Ablett guy and his team," I got hooked onto supporting Geelong - with all the amazing ups and downs that entails (it feels good having seen 4 flags, but 1989 still hurts!). Incidentally, it probably helped a bit that the local Australian football team in Ipswich were, too, nicknamed the Cats.

It was great to support Geelong during the late 1980s and early 1990s with all the amazing players they had: Ablett Snr., Stoneham, Couch, Bairstow, Brownless, the Hockings, Hinkley, the whole lot! Went to a Bears vs Cats game at Carrara in 1990 with a schoolmate of mine (a Tigers supporter, but whose parents with even keener Cats supporters than me), and it was cool to see Ablett perform his footballing magic tricks even on a quiet-ish nice (... still puzzling about how he grabbed that mark from the wrestle with Mark Zanotti in the goalsquare!?!?!).

I can definitely appreciate how influential families can be on footy team support growing up (wonder what your Pies supporting family thought of your support for Geelong?!). It was awesome for me to be a graduate at uni with a supervisor who was a Cats-loving supervisor; good times chatting about the Geelong teams both yesterday and today!

The rest of the 2023 season makes me feel pretty uneasy lol. Will live in hope for winning the last two games (and, yep, will get up at an ungodly hour to watch), but the up-and-down season so far can make even a diehard feel uncertain. Fingers crossed!

GO CATS!

Yes, it was very unfortuntate that we didn't manage to win single flag from '89-'97. I was born in '84, so the first loss I saw live was 1992. I still think '93 and '97 were probably our best chances to snare one, given how open those years were with no real clear standouts, but once again, it wasn't to be. A very sad and frustrating era for the club, but I am so proud how we didn't sook about it and have made up for it with 4 flags in recent times. Can't ask for much more really I don't think.

Last year was my favourite flag of all. I honesrly believed our time had passed, so it was incrdibly satisfying after all those near misses again since 2012. What flag was your fav?

My family weren't huge football people, so there wasn't really a backlash when I chose the Cats. They were probably just a little suprised with how random it was lol.

 

[felis scalpere]

I met an American I was staying in a hostel with in a GC. He was travelling to Melbourne so I offered to show him round (I'm from Perth but live here now). We went to an AFL game and I explained some of the rules to him. Our sport really is unique. Yeah I bet they'd never seen anyone do that to a ball before lol. Have you got into American football? It seems complicated with lots of rules.

Yeah wouldn't mind seeing Aussie rules gain popularity outside Aus. Would love to visit the States again sometime too.

G'day again! On and off I have tried to watch an American football game but I personally find it both incomprehensible (agree about the too-many rules issue) and boring. Basically, I try not to engage with it.

Probably now is a good time to visit the US before the denizens here really go into partisan meltdown during the 2024 presidential election campaign. As you'd know, what is really great about the US is the sheer diversity of places, people, and things to do.

 

[felis scalpere]

Yes, it was very unfortuntate that we didn't manage to win single flag from '89-'97. I was born in '84, so the first loss I saw live was 1992. I still think '93 and '97 were probably our best chances to snare one, given how open those years were with no real clear standouts, but once again, it wasn't to be. A very sad and frustrating era for the club, but I am so proud how we didn't sook about it and have made up for it with 4 flags in recent times. Can't ask for much more really I don't think.

Last year was my favourite flag of all. I honesrly believed our time had passed, so it was incrdibly satisfying after all those near misses again since 2012. What flag was your fav?

My family weren't huge football people, so there wasn't really a backlash when I chose the Cats. They were probably just a little suprised with how random it was lol.

hey rapidfire. Geelong definitely had a talented crop of players between 1989 and 1997, but probably the big question during that time was to what extent individual talents could gel into a cohesive team. Have to say that 1992 also stung, as did 1995 (though Carlton were a clearly better team that year ... funnily enough, I remember going to a waterlogged Bears v Blues pre-season match on the Sunshine Coast and boldly declared Carlton then that the Blues would snare the flag ... also felt the exact same way as the mighty Cats last year when watching them eviscerate GWS in Canberra!).

Great question about what flag, or flags, are my favourite. Hard to go past 2007, the first Cats premiership in my own lifetime, followed by last year. Last year's win was just so satisfying to watch as a supporter, after watching Geelong contend for so long.

lol in reaction to your comments about family. If I might dare say - just from my own experience being around some fanatically one-eyed Collingwood supporters - I sometimes wonder, from a Pies supporter's perspective, if following ANY other team seems, to them, random or anomalous?

 

[_Mike_]

G'day again!

Welcome to BigFooty felis,

If you havent done so already go visit the Cats board and say hi

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[spudmaster]

Hi all!

Welcome aboard mate.

I'm a massive Geelong Cats supporter, originally from Brisbane, Australia, but living and working in the Fairfax, VA, area of the US.

And stay over there!

 

[felis scalpere]

Welcome aboard mate.

And stay over there!

haha thank you, mate, I appreciate your warm welcome (from afar). Sorry to bring bad news in advance, but promise to return to irritate every Hawks supporter (and to cop it all back in equal measure!).
GO CATS!