7/12/23
“The Autumn wind is a Raider, pillaging just for fun. He’ll knock you ’round, and upside down, and laugh when he’s conquered and won.” It’s a classic song that most die hard raiders fans know. The song and lyrics were created in 1974 with the musical score made by Sam Spence and the lyrics by the legendary Steve Sabol. Most NFL fans may not know the lyrics, but they sure as hell have heard the song, and damn does it get me fired up for football to start.
Yes, football draws ever closer to us all, and dammit am I so fired up, but I don’t think the Australians are so much. Their football is in the 4th quarter of their season, with only a few more regular season games left and then playoffs. There are 16 teams in the league, and something like 11 of them are based out of Melbourne, which is fucking nuts. My team, the Richmond Tigers, used to be a wagon from 2017-2020, winning the championship 3 out of 4 years, kinda sucks this season and they need to win out with some help to try and make a late push to the playoffs. There are no divisions or conferences in the league, so the best 8 teams go to the playoffs. The best 2 teams right now are Port Adelaide and Collingswood. They barely lose and Collingswood bent over the Gold Coast a few weeks ago and literally beat them by 78 points. With 6 games left in the regular season, anything is possible for the playoffs.
Circling back to the Raiders and American Football, I have uncovered something very interesting about this historic franchise. Turns out, they have a rather large fanbase in Melbourne, or at least, people like wearing Raiders gear. I mean, they REALLY like wearing Raiders gear. I hadn’t really noticed it until last week, but now every time I go out I swear I see someone wearing some sort of Raiders something. Shirt. Hat. I even saw some teenager at the gym wearing a Josh Jacobs jersey while he was working out. I’m not sure if it’s the combination of the silver and black that people like but it’s really weird it’s the only NFL gear I’ve seen around here no more than one person. I’ve seen other teams here and there but not more then once. I say the color combination is the reason for support for two different reasons. One, people here also really like the Brooklyn Nets. Now, fanbases out here aren’t like back at home. You won’t find the cliche Cowboys, Lakers, Yankees fan out here like you would back at home. Everyone here is a homer, ride or die, for the city, so nobody is just simply rooting for the Raiders and the Nets at the same time. What both teams do have in common though is their colors: silver and black. People might’ve liked KD or Kyrie when they were on the team but I’m not so sure how much people watch the NBA out here since Dellavedova has been irrelevant in the league for a while. Therefore, I gotta assume people just like the colors put together.
The second reason why people might like this color scheme is because of New Zealand. For all the people out there who suck at geography, Australia is really damn close to New Zealand. It’s basically Australia’s Canada. New Zealand sports teams’ colors are, you guessed it, fucking silver and black. This may be some of the reason to support teams in the United States whose colors are similar to that of the Kiwi’s. Now, I’m not fully sure as to what the infatuation of the silver and black is with American sports teams, this is just theory. I had a theory that people liked the Raiders because of rap artists like Ice Cube always rocking Raiders’ jerseys back in the day, but that doesn’t explain the obsession over the nets either. After doing this observing, I will start asking people I see supporting these sports teams why they like them. Hopefully, I’m somewhat right, but odds are I’m just completely 100% wrong.
Sports n Stuff 