I grew up with football as the game in which you run with the ball in your hands - rugby - as opposed to the kind of football in which you kick the ball - soccer.
Blue Dragon has a football (meaning soccer) team, called Real Betis Vietnam. We meet every Sunday morning and between 40 and 60 kids come to play an hour on dirt fields. It's great fun, and serves as a powerful outreach to the local community and to street kids.
But now we're starting to get into the other football (meaning rugby). Some local expats and the United Nations International School (UNIS) have started coaching and basic games for Vietnamese youth, as a way of introducing the Australian sport into Vietnam. The theory, of course, is that a game in which opponents stamp each other into the ground will be good for international relations.
So Blue Dragon kids have been heading up to UNIS on Saturday afternoons to learn to play - and they're having stacks of fun! Some photos to prove it...
Learning to drop kick
Girls can play too!
Some of you will recognise Quan, in the Blue shirt.He was in Australia for surgery this time last year;
this is the first sport he has played since then.
OK, this isn't relevant.Just a break for readers who aren't into sports.
Go, Thuy!
3 comments:
Australian sport? Rugby?
Rugby isn't "the Australian sport"! It's another in the English tradition of inventing a sport, donating it to the world and then being rubbish at it so every other country trounces us at it...
When I was in Oz, I found that "football" meant proper football, rugby or Aussie rules depending on which state you were in. So no sneaky teaching the Vietnamese kids the wrong terminology :-P
See you for a game of *real* football in July :)
haha Michael!
that picture of the dog had me chuckling. What a mind reader, you. I was just scrolling very fast through the whole entry and only stopped to look at that cute little darling. :)
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