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Part 1 - The Early Years

The United States, in the early 1980s, was invaded by Australia and it was hard not to take notice.  If it wasn't Olivia Newton John, Men at Work, Paul Hogan or "Sydney" the koala bear, it was Australia defeating the USA to claim the America's Cup.

 

ESPN was the vehicle behind America's first glimpse of Australian Rules Football.

The invasion finally reached my doorstep on a June morning in 1983.  I was a young 14 year old lad in the midst of the largest upheaval of my life to that point - moving from the only the only place I had ever called home in Elizabeth, New Jersey to a small town named Ilion in the heart of upstate New York.  My family and I were staying at a motel while we waited for our furniture to arrive so we could move into our new home.  In the motel room, I was turning the channels on the TV until I came across this most unusual sport on ESPN.  One team was wearing black and white stripes while the other wore blue, red and yellow sleeveless uniforms.  It made absolutely no sense to me, however, I instantly became intrigued by this program and remained glued to the set until I learned from a man named Peter Landy that I was watching Australian Rules Football.  I came to find out I was watching an encounter between the Collingwood Magpies and the Fitzroy Lions at a field named Victoria Park.  Fitzroy ran out winners that day by a score of Fitzroy 13g - 15b - 93 pts to Collingwood 10g - 17b - 77 pts.  It took only this telecast to convert me not only into a Collingwood barracker, but a worshipper of footy as well.

 

Letters I received from the Seven Network and Victorian Football League Marketing.

From that point on, I made sure I watched every single broadcast on ESPN (even if that meant waking up in the middle of a school night to see it).  The sad part was that there was no other source here in the United States at the time (at least none I was aware of) that had information on footy.  Thanks to Peter Landy, and the Seven Network, however, we were always given the address to Channel 7 in South Melbourne for questions, comments, rule books, and the like.  Many times I wrote Channel 7 and Peter Landy to voice how pleased I was with the sport of footy and the quality of the telecasts.  In return, they always sent me rule books, pamphlets, and even autographed photos of Peter - very fine people at the station they were!