Bob
Ley (right) hosts the 1985 Grand Final live on ESPN with former Carlton
skipper Mike Fitzpatrick.
While
the regular season consisted of a highlight show, the playoffs were something
different. In 1983, ESPN began televising the VFL Grand Final live for
Americans. So, at around 12:30 AM Eastern Time on the final Saturday in
September, I would tune in to the Grand Final for the rare glimpse at a full
game. For me, the first three Grand Finals I watched were contested
between Hawthorn and Essendon. ESPN put together a nice little show around
the game which was hosted, in the early years, by Bob
Ley and a special guest who was usually a former player in the VFL.
Together, they would provide local commentary on the game and
educate Americans on all the pageantry, activities and hype going on in
Melbourne leading up to the big match. These telecasts were simply
fantastic and informative. Among my favorite parts of these telecasts
included a number of footy "videos," or action set to footy music.
You could hear great tunes such as "One Day in September," "Up There, Cazaly," "When The
Outer Roars," and "It's Our Australian Football, This Mighty
Game is Ours." Thanks to my good friend in Australia, who wishes to
be known as "Mr. Ripper," I finally was able to get a high quality
recording of many of the great footy songs by Greg Champion and Mike
Brady. If anyone out there knows how I can get a high quality recording of
"It's Our Australian Football" (sung by Mike Brady) and "When the
Outer Roars" (sung by Greg Salter), I would certainly appreciate it!
George
Grande and Phillip Pinnell host the 1986 Grand Final live in the United
States on ESPN.
Starting in 1985, ESPN telecasted all the playoff games,
in addition to the Grand Final. On top of that, at the end of the season,
Bob Ley would do a special show on ESPN that reviewed the entire season,
provided deeper insight into the game and its folklore, and included guests
like commentator and former Collingwood great Lou Richards. I believe the
show was called "Footy - the World's Roughest Game" and was
broadcast in 1983 and 1984 (did anyone ever record either of these shows?).
In all, ESPN did a great job in providing additional coverage of Australian
Football as the number of fans in the USA grew.
I've set up a footy music jukebox
below so you can enjoy snippets of some of the great tunes I am referring
to. The songs are:
Clip #1: "All in the Game
Clip #2: "It's Our Australian
Football"
Clip #3: "Little Bit of
Cazaly in Us All"
Clip #4: "One Day in
September"
Clip #5: "Saturday Arvo"
Clip #6: "That's the Thing
About Football"
Clip #7: "Up There
Cazaly"
Clip #8: "When the Outer
Roars"
If you are using Internet Explorer
to view this website and have Windows Media Player installed, you should see
the embedded Media Player below with a dropdown menu underneath it.
Select a clip from the dropdown menu below and click the PLAY button (>) button in the media player to hear it.
If you are using Netscape to view this site, click on
one of the speakers below to listen to the corresponding .mp3 file
- Play Clip #1
- Play Clip #2
- Play Clip #3
- Play Clip #4
- Play Clip #5
- Play Clip #6
- Play Clip #7
- Play Clip #8
Watching
Aussie Rules became a time-honored tradition for me in my high school
years. I remember playing the footy music on this page for my school
soccer club I was part of on a small cassette player while on the bus en route
to soccer matches. I remember how everyone loved the music and we always
seemed to play better whenever we had the music handy! Because many of my
soccer mates also watched Aussie Rules (thanks to me), they all had no problem
experimenting with a scratch footy match after soccer practice. This
became my little outlet for playing the great Australian Football game.
Yes, indeed, American footy was live and well in the heart of Central New York
State in the mid 1980s!
