Your First Game

[sherbrook]

Tell us the first match you attended.

Mine was 31/08/1963, the Round 17 clash between Footscray and Essendon at Western Oval in front 27,231 people.
It was a disappointing day for this 6 YO Bulldog as we went down to the reigning premiers by 56 points.
Although the Dons won big, they ultimately failed to make the finals.

 

[killer]

Don't remember the exact game
but spent the 79/80 season watching NTFL from behind the gardens oval fence
lot of people did. It was Darwin tradition
hot dog venders and ice cream trucks would come past
Watched the gf standing on the car roof with my dad
think it might have rained + North Darwin got absolutely done

Couple of years later they started putting the VFL on TV
though these players looked like the guys on the Melbourne wrestling show
pale + bloated
actually the commentary wasn't that removed (Ted Whitten? ) from the level of the wrestling

 

[Todman]

Dad was a Carlton supporter and the closest game to the farm was at Geelong. April 24, 1971 Carlton 13.21- 99 to Geelong 13.8 - 86. We were standing on steel beercans on the wing. I remember how big "little Trevor Keogh" was as he chased a ball out of bound.

There were also two drunks in front of us. They got removed when they started throwing half full cans onto the field during the third quarter.

 

[CarterS]

First Bears home game. Round 4 1987.

Fitzroy v Bears: The first VFL game at Carrara

EASTER Sunday, April 19, 1987. The Brisbane Bears gave birth to a new chapter in the AFL when they hosted Fitzroy in the first game in the expanded national competition to be played on the Gold Coast.

www.lions.com.au

 

[Goggin Our Best]

1968 , Got taken to at least 3 games which i can remember tiny bits of Ess v Geel Windy Hill , can remember an incident in the 2nd qtr . Footscray v Geel at Western Oval i can picture in 1st qtr standing hff outer side Barkly St end . Also that year went to the GF Carl v Ess , and i can remember or picture straight after the game 2 Ess trainers carried their capt Ken Fraser ( he couldnt walk , hurt his knee in the PF and didnt play in the GF ) for a lap of honour

Also went to a Geel v Sth Melb game at KP , and Denis Marshall who played for Geel from 64-68 he had a shot for goal - City end goals - it went straight at the right hand goal post didnt deviate at all and hit the post , thus that game could have been before 1968

 

[JPetro83]

Round 18, 1991 Adelaide v Sydney at Football Park.

I was 8! we lost in a close game, Barry Mitchell carved us up. Warrick Capper played and i just remember him coping it from the crowd. So my first game was a loss but we went the week after to the Crows v Essendon game and we won!
I think from that week on i probably only missed 1 or no home games a season from 1991 all the way through until the end of 2018. Now i only get to a game 2 or 3 times a year.

Football Park was awesome

 

[Gibbsy]

The first one I know for sure was Rd 1, 1999: Collingwood v Hawthorn at the G. We used to always played the Hawks in Rd 1 in the late '90s / early 2000s, and with my uncle and cousins supporting the Hawks, we would drive up to Melbourne each year.

I remember sitting up the back of the old Olympic Stand as a tiny tacker (can't recall if it was this game) and getting genuinely scared about falling off the back of the stadium.

The rule from my uncle on the way home was KFC if the Hawks won, Maccas if they lost. Couldn't really go wrong either way as a youngster. Good times.

 

[rdrdrdrd]

Being an Adelaide boy, my first game was a SANFL match - 19 August 1967 at Prospect Oval with North Adelaide 17.16 def Central Districts 4.4 - my grandparents took me to the game as their method of childcare while my parents went out somewhere. Hawthorn was the first VFL team I saw in the flesh. They journeyed over to Adelaide the week after the 1971 Grand Final to play the SANFL premiers North Adelaide in the Champions of Australia match. I badly wanted to see a VFL team with the extra bonus of seeing Peter Hudson play as well. Poor Peter Hudson must have still been concussed from colliding with Kevin Neale's fist a week earlier as he had a quiet day opposed to Bob Hammond - an outstanding South Australian full back. North actually hit the front midway through the last quarter until Moncrieff kicked some late goals for the Hawks to get up. The following year North beat Carlton by a point to win the Champions of Australia title and I was there for that match as well. Despite this I'm not a North fan - have been a Sturt supporter all these years !

 

[Paddywagon]

1986 Sydney v Carlton as 5 year old at princess Park. Dont remember much.

 

[Raz]

South Fremantle vs East Perth 1976, don't recall any of the game i was only 10. But i do remember my Brother who took me to the game was mighty upset as he supported East Perth all his life and i hadn't supported any team until South Fremantle won the game and from then on i was a Fremantle boy .

LOL

Yes not AFL . but many in here were quoting VFL games.

First AFL game was Fremantle in 1995 Fremantle vesus Essondon

Dont recall anything about that game except holding my one month old baby in the crowd .. Woohoo !

 

[Cyclops]

Cannot exactly remember, I was born into a Magpie tribe and pretty much every home game a selection of us would walk to Victoria Park and watch from the Dights Falls end, behind the goals. I remember seeing Hawthorn, Footscray a few others. Probably 1976ish?

 

[MortlockWatcher]

Mum took me to a few Sandringham games in 1978 but my first VFL game was the 1979 2nd Semi Final. I went with my grandfather and I remember asking him at quarter-time who he barracked for and he said "Carlton". I said "good, I will follow them, too" and he said "well, they're the only team we are going to see".

Lived through some great moments ... and then a few decades of shitness.

 

[stmookeyj]

First I remember attending, Round 18 1989, Footscray vs Essendon at the Kennel. Low scoring played in a bog and windy conditions. Based at the Geelong Road End which wasn't as landscaped as it is now (few rows of concrete terraces, then a gravel mound where if the crowd was low enough some slid on cardboard boxes where I preferred to make mounds from the gravel).

 

[dalkin47]

My Dad, a Nth Melbourne supporter took myself and two older brothers to the Collingwood v North Melbourne game of round 18, 1958. My oldest brother was already a one~eyed Pie and the middle brother North. As a 7 year old, I had a penchant for the highly successful Demons. I will never forget the old white scoreboard with black numbers, displaying a 13 point loss to the Pies, 12 16 88, Roos 14 17 101. Despite the loss, Victoria Park was a magic place for me and just a few weeks later, the Pies caused the greatest Grand Final upset in history in defeating my now despised Dees.

 

[TasSixer]

First AFL game I attended was the St Kilda v Fremantle draw in Launceston. I didn't hear the siren either.

 

[RedmanWasHere]

Locally, probably a Box Hill North home game at Elgar Park in 1999.

AFL, Essendon vs Melbourne a year later.

 

[ioppolo]

AFL Tables - West Coast v Sydney - Sat, 15-May-2004 2:10 PM (4:10 PM) - Match Stats

Went as a nine year old and actually have a decent memory of it. Turned out to be Glen Jakovich

Glen Jakovich

Age

52

Ht

193cm

Wt

102kg

Pos.

Def

Career

Season

Last 5

D

17.2

4star

K

12.0

4star

HB

5.2

4star

M

4.2

4star

T

1.0

3star

No current season stats available

D

17.6

5star

K

11.2

4star

HB

6.4

4star

M

4.2

4star

T

0.6

3star

's last game.

 

[Toucan Soup]

If we're talking "first VFL game", for me, it was Round 14, 1981, Essendon V Hawthorn at the Gabba. A perfect, sunny Winter's day for Brisbane. I can still recall sitting on the dog track behind the goals at the school end, impressed by how quickly the game was moving.
If we're talking local games, then it was probably Round 1, 1970, when Teachers were defeated by University of Qld in the newly formed SQAFA competition. I can't recall any of it though - I would have been in pram.

 

[Pitbulll]

First one I remember was a twilight game at Princes Park in the late 90s. Don’t recall the exact year but it was freezing and I spent most of the game distracted by the hot jam donuts stand nearby. Still counts, right?

 

[Gibbke]

1st VFL/AFL:
1988 Grand Final, Hawks record win over Melbourne.
2nd VFL/AFL:
1991 Fitzroy v Hawks at North Hobart, Hawks record score.
3rd VFL/AFL:
1992 Fitzroy v Essendon at North Hobart, 3 point win, great game.
4th VFL/AFL:
1995 Hawks v Collingwood at MCG, Dunstall a split second too late to get the dead in front mark that would have won the game for the underdog Hawks.

Great start...got worse after that. 1998 Hawks v Brisbane is the worst game I've ever seen, the crappiness of the struggling Hawks surpassed only by the sheer ineptitude of the wooden spoon bound Lions. A long string of Lions wins over Hawthorn until 2008, went every year for the same old humiliations at the Gabba, until they took a decade long break from travelling up to Qld.

One really enjoyable game for hopefully the right reasons - I saw Hodge line up for the Lions against the Hawks in 2018, and even though the Lions won, it was great seeing Hodge dominate down back while teaching his young teammates. Half full stadium, but the noise they made, the difference between that and games before when for years they were a sad unit, has me thinking I might just have seen the rebirth of the Lions that very night. Sat there thinking "this is good for footy"...

 

[Corn Cobbers]

My parents divorced when I was 2, dad had us on weekends, I don't remember any of my first 60 or so games

 

[Mero]

R17 1973.
My Grade 1 teacher was Mrs Fletcher, and her husband played for Essendon.
So I badgered dad about going to see Mrs Fletcher's husband play in a real game.
Eventually he got tickets to the Reynolds Stand and we saw the Bombers prevail over StKilda.
Robin Close kicked 5 goals, and a kid named Ron Andrews played his first game for Essendon that day.

 

[HawkerHurricane]

R16 15th July 1988
Friday Night Game WCE v Brisbane Bears @ the WACA,
WCE defeated Bris 98 - 89

We had travelled up from Kendenup/Mt Barker to play the half time game.
Just coming up to Perth from the farm was exciting enough, let alone being in the change rooms with our heroes,
then running out into the bright lights of the WACA!
Loved every minute of it, was a tight game, Mainy was best on ground, Laurie Keene kicked 5 & we even got to see Warrick Capper in action!