The AFL Grand Final

Some of the people reading the previous post may not quite get how huge some of what I got to experience was and just how lucky I was to get in on the Reddit box. For this post I've translated the Dota stuff in the last post to AFL stuff, to give you some idea. Apologies if some of it is off, obviously I care about as much about AFL as you do about Dota, so there will be some errors :)

So, the reason I flew all the way to Melbourne in the first place was to watch the AFL finals series.

Tickets for the games were sold through Ticketmaster.

There were three types of ticket, VIP, stands, and General Admission.

VIP tickets were sold out in approximately 4 seconds, the stands were gone shortly after that, and general admission was mostly gone in 15 minutes, but if you kept trying you could pick up a general admission tickets for about an hour because of how the ticket master system works.

There was a post on the AFL forums by a guy who had missed out on getting a ticket when they went on sale, and so he had contacted the MCG directly to find out if there was any other way of attending. They said that there was one suite/box available and it seated 32 people, and cost ~$10,000. So he was looking for 31 other people willing to trust him with their credit card numbers to arrange the suite. (The G was willing to charge multiple cards but they wanted a single point of contact for organising the thing).

I already had a general admission ticket but figured, hey, if I'm travelling half way around the world for this; go big or go home. So I gave him my details, and ended up watching the AFL finals from Box seats.

(an aside, as I sit in the Melbourne Central food court and write this, Adam Goodes just walked past)

Hands down the best decision I made.

The AFL had booked all the other suites for production staff, the teams, press, and corporate sponsors. We were effectively backstage at the event, and no one really seemed to know that we were an exception to the rest of the area. As a result we had random players and commentators come into the suite at various points and sit down and watch the matches with us. At one point the entirety of the Gold Coast Suns was in our suite watching a game. Kelli Underwood came in at one point to prepare for an upcoming call, as it was quieter in our box than where she was allocated to sit. Tim Watson watched the first two quarters of the Grand Final with us.

(second aside, Ken has been here for less than 15 seconds and already has sprayed Vegemite all over my more expensive than if I'd bought it in the US laptop)

I felt bad bothering people for photos or trying to chat to them too much as we were effectively backstage where they would probably come for a break from fans, but some of them were quite happy to chat to us, sign things, or pose for photos.

The queue to get in. This is the pleb queue, we got to enter via the member's entrance.

The view of the ground from the suite.

Close up of the commentary box.

Photosphere of the ground.

Fireworks and Confetti post Sydney win.

Guy McKenna

Selfie with Mick Molloy. Yes that is Lewis Roberts-Thomson behind me.

Garry Lyon signs a fans shoe.

Mr Bigshot with Nathan Buckley's biggest fan.
 (For this to make sense Nathan Buckley needs to have legally changed his name to Mr Bigshot)

Dave Hughes films an interview in the bathroom of our suite.

Livinia Nixon

The crowd attempting to leave post finals.
We get to leave via the player walkway. Suckers.

Also, the queued up fans look expectantly as we
come out the doors, then realize we aren't players.
Such disappoint. Double suckers.

I've got to say, I'm massively impressed with Lance Franklin and Luke Hodge. I was walking past the G a few hours later to go to the post office and post the various swag and merch I got back to ther USA and I noticed something was still going on outside. I later found out that they had stayed behind after the finals to sign autographs for fans. When the MCG staff told them they had to leave because they were locking up the gates, they simply relocated outside and kept on going.