AFL 2020 season suspended: NFL punter mourns loss of new love

Many in the US watched a game of footy for the first time over the weekend and there’s a strange sense of mourning now it’s gone.

Former NFL punter Pat McAfee.

Sport-starved Americans lapped up round one of the AFL season — led by former NFL punter turned podcaster Pat McAfee who described it as “my favourite sport I’ve ever seen”.

So there’s a strange sense of mourning from a part of the world that had previously paid little mind to our great game now the season has been suspended until at least June amid the coronavirus crisis.

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McAfee again led the way during a segment on The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday morning.

“The thing that I’m very bummed about getting postponed, was my new-found love — the AFL,” the former Colts punter said, before explaining how he’d lived for 32 years without ever seeing a game.

“I did a radio show in Australia … and they asked me how I’d never seen Aussie rules football before. I was like, ‘Great question, actually’. Because there are a lot of Australian punters that have come over to America to punt footballs.

“I don’t want to offend my new-found friends in Australia but whenever the Australian punters were coming over here, the original statement was they were punting rugby-style.

“I actually punted rugby style in college, that’s what we called it, when ultimately it wasn’t rugby-style, it was Aussie rules football-style. But we called it rugby-style. The marketing from the beginning was wrong.

“Everybody said, ‘He’s going in for the rugby kick’, and then I started talking to some of these Australian punters who were like, ‘It’s actually Aussie rules football, mate’.

“I always blew them off and was like, ‘Yeah I get it, but it’s rugby, it’s the same as rugby’.”

The thing that I'm very bummed about getting postponed was my new found love the @AFL #PatMcAfeeShowLIVE pic.twitter.com/FGQNbsJTWr

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) March 23, 2020

But McAfee has seen the light and has no doubt about which Aussie sport he prefers.

“Rugby, very tough sport, I respect it but it’s a little too slow for me,” he said.

“For me the mosh pits and the whole thing, it’s not what I would enjoy watching. But then when I watched an Aussie rules football game the other night for the first time in my life I was like, ‘Wait a minute, this sport is awesome’. A lot of wide, open running, a lot of juking, there’s like six or seven punts a minute.

“The punting is the only way you score. There’s these Moss-like catches from people, there’s an American in the league called Mason Cox – they call him Cox-zilla – he’s six foot 10, he Randy Mosses people.

“The sport is potentially the best sport I’ve ever seen and I had never in a million years taken the time to watch it, ever.

Cox-zilla. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

“It was always (broadcast) late night-early morning and in my mind it was rugby. And then I watched it Friday night ... it IS NOT rugby.

“It is a very different game. The punters, the volleyball-punching of the ball, the soccer-like attack style, it was the sport I was supposed to play as a child.

“If I had known that sport was around as a child, I would have been playing Aussie rules football.

“Now is a time a lot of Americans were getting introduced to this great sport ... now was a time for it to make a run. Obviously for the betterment of everyone’s health, it’s postponed until June. So now we have nothing.”

But McAfee said he was planning to watch old games on YouTube and promised Australia he is “in the for the long haul”.

“This is a sport I enjoy a lot,” he said. “I love it. We’re going to go to Australia at some point and watch one of these games.”