And finally, my first NRL game

A ticket to the footy game is not cheap. If there is a group of four, my friends were scheming to get away with family passes - as if we can pretend to look like parents with kids in their teens. But a few hours before the game started, I found out that we got free tickets! Hoorah!

Imagine not knowing what a try or a scrum is after all these years living in Australia. It's quite pathetic, I know, but you can't blame me for being plain ignorant. Rugby isn't a popular sport in Victoria and I only started picking up these jargons from watching the annual State of Origin game between the Blues and the Maroons since moving to NSW. So that makes TWO footy games that I've watched on telly, and I can't be sure if I even had my bum on the couch for the full game. Probably not.

The view of WIN stadium from the hillside

But it was an insane first live footy game ever for me. It was pouring cats and dogs just five minutes before the game was due to kick off. Thankfully, I had an umbrella but you can't quite keep dry when you are sharing space under one shelter. And then, there was the wear-the-wrong-type-of-shoes-because-you-want-to-look-good syndrome. What was I thinking! To make matters worse, the free standing area was on a hillside. Great! Just the perfect landscape for toe blisters. And then, there was the never-have-enough-clothes-on-to-keep-warm dilemma. On my way to the stadium, I overheard the dee jay reminding people to bring their doonas. I was confused, but found out soon enough why.

But it was all worth it to finally watch a rugby game and madly yelling out in support of the Dragons, whose existence was only known to me the day before. And the fact that they had five straight losses and one win over the past six weeks isn't very encouraging. Everyone wants to support a winning team, and the Dragons did not let me down (18-4 win against the Sharks), save for a ruffle in the second half where one player from each team was sent off. The crowd was just screaming "OUT! OUT! OUT!" the whole time, obviously unhappy with the error-riddled game in the rain.

Well, one of my To-Do list is now striked out. Need to see if I can hunt a free entry to an AFL game.

It was my American friend's first footy game too!