Following the Footy From Far Away

Long time readers of this blog would know that I am am a passionate Australian Football (AFL) fan, and one-eyed St Kilda Supporter!!

This past weekend saw the start of the 2008 season, so I feel it's appropriate to share my learnings of how to follow the game from the other side of the world.

First off, television coverage.

I have DirecTV and on channel 615 ( for an extra $15 a month), there is Setanta Sports

Formerly known as the Victorian Football League, and commonly known as the AFL, it is the Australian national competition in the sport of Australian Rules Football. The AFL is the most popular professional sporting league in Australia. These matches are followed by a series of final matches that culminate in the two best teams playing for the premiership in the AFL Grand Final , the best attended domestic club championship event in the world .

Setanta Sports will be broadcasting at least two LIVE events each week, along with at least one highlight show.

So, I got to watch my game this weekend. w00t

Next, is online coverage. I split this into two buckets : Web & Mobile Web.

Web

All the usual suspects - a mixture of traditional media and fans

• AFL
• Sportal
• Final Siren
• Real Footy
• Sports Australia
• ABC Grandstand
• Herald Sun Footy
• https://fig.aflcasts.com/
• AFL Football Blog (Unofficial)
• The Podcast Network's AFL Show
• Australian Football Association of North America

Mobile Web

It's a rather sad tale to tell

I open up https://wap.afl.com.au and get

 

Now, I find it an amusing error result. At the top I see "Free to Browse" and in the middle I'm told to call Telstra. When I do contact Telstra, I am told that this is only available to customers of their network. I try to explain that I am no longer based in Australia.

Anyways, at the bottom of the page is a link to BigPond Sport.

Which leads me to a mobile portal page for BIgpond, *not* Bigpond Sport

And the Sport's section has an AFL link

Which gives is this handy dandy little site

With News, Fixtures, Results, Ladders etc

For news, I also have Foxsports

and ABC Mobile

And to be honest, that's about it. Haven't found any other good mobile sites. (IMHO the state of Australian mobile friendly sites is pretty poor.)

I would love to know of others. Leave me a link in the comments.

Oh and Carn the Saints!

Technorati Tags: AFL,Footy,Mobile,Setanta,AFANA

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
  We've also created a new mobile site for wwos.com.au. More details http://paulkeen.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/wwoscomau-is-now-on-your-mobile/

• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
  hey paul thx for the link ive totally stopped using any ninemsn services as they havent been useful to me for ages. i will check out the link and now i know you're blogging, i can keep up to date with that too. cheers

• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
  Mate you got lucky again on the weekend! Well done and hope all is fun over there. Fletch out!