SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
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Washington: On a recent Saturday morning, Jonathan Levy rocked up to West Potomac Park in Washington for the DC Eagles’ first training session of the year. It’s his third year playing for the US capital’s Aussie rules team.
As the footy season kicks off back home, it’s comforting to see players handballing a Sherrin, and receiving feedback – in an Australian accent – about “kicking through the corridor”.
Levy, 42, has watched the game for a decade since being introduced to it by a friend. Like many Americans who discover AFL, he was instantly hooked by the fast pace of the sport, compared with American football.
He became a passionate supporter and friend of the GWS Giants. On his first trip to Australia in 2023, he attended a match, and when he returned two years later with his wife, they waved the flag at the season opener against Collingwood.
“Every Australian is always shocked to hear there’s an American who’s not only into footy but who supports GWS,” Levy says.
DC Eagles president Tom Mathew estimates about 60 per cent of the club are Americans, himself included. In the US Australian Football League, no more than half the players on the field at any one time can be Australian – a rule designed to help spread the game in the US.
There are dozens of AFL clubs across the US, from Seattle to Sacramento, Denver to Des Moines, Chicago to Cincinnati. Aussie Rules USA says about 2000 athletes compete in more than 200 games each year.
For the DC Eagles, training starts in March, with home-and-away games throughout the year, punctuated by major tournaments. The men will start with an April match against the Virginia Lions, and both teams will host a major home game against the New York Magpies in early May.
From there, the men will compete in the Mid-Atlantic Cup, while the women head to Montreal for a tournament in June. Both will compete in the regionals (this year it’s in Minneapolis) and the nationals in Sarasota, Florida, to end the season in October.
Coaching the men’s team this year is Tyson Brown, who played 11 years for South Adelaide in the SANFL, and moved to Washington just over a year ago. He was pleased to see a large turnout for the first training session of the year – about 50, including plenty of enthusiastic newcomers.
“A lot of the Australians are at the embassy, so they bring their American friends out,” Brown says. “A lot see it online, get shown a video and become obsessed with it. The contact and the openness of it is what appeals to them, rather than padding and all that.”
The teams attract a mix of old hands and curious newbies. Stephanie Hower, the women’s coach, started playing footy with the University of Technology Sydney in 2012, and has played four seasons in Washington.
She is hoping for a big result this year. “We’ll see how the season goes,” Hower says, with typically Australian restraint. “We’ve had a good run in the past.”
Jacqui Page, meanwhile, got “dragged into” AFL by her fiance, Will Lack, and is now playing her third season.
“I had never played AFL growing up. I never watched it, being one of four girls,” she says. “We had a friend over here who started playing, they connected us and told us to come along, and I’ve been hooked ever since.”
The men’s and women’s teams both train twice a week at West Potomac Park, just south of the Lincoln Memorial, where they are overlooked by the iconic Washington Monument.
Last year, the ground was rendered unusable for much of the season after several tanks chewed up the grass while parked there for President Donald Trump’s special military parade. The DC Eagles temporarily relocated their training and games across the river to Anacostia.
After two hours or so in unusually windy conditions, the year’s first training session is over. Then, this being an Australian affair, it’s off to the pub.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.
