While the boys were doing great things in Perth over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend an Auskick registration day at Broken Hill.

Broken Hill – yes I had heard of it and I knew it had something to do with mining, but had no idea where it was.

After checking its location, I headed to the airport at 5:20am for my 6:30am Rex Airlines flight. After burying my head in the Advertiser for 50mins we were preparing to land. Looking out the window, all I could see was red dirt and a runway. I was in the outback!

Broken Hill’s love for footy was evident as soon as I arrived at the registration hall. It was surrounded by two GREEN, well maintained ovals and it was great to see so many kids at the registration.

Parents flowed into the hall with hyped up families for almost three hours. There must have been nearly 250 keen kids ready to start the new season. The impressive part was that there were a good number of Power fans amongst them.

While I was there, I learnt that life in Broken Hill for most involves mining and footy.

They have their own football league that has four teams. South, West, Central and North. Each team plays each other six times in the season. Talk about getting to know your opposition! However, depending on the shifts at the mines, teams can change dramatically from week to week.

I had a quick chat in the rooms to two of the clubs before they began their first hit out. You could see how keen these blokes were to get out there, they may not have just finished four months of hard pre-season (in fact they were all shapes and sizes) but they just wanted to play footy.

Broken Hill claims a handful of current AFL footballers to be there own, Dean Solomon (Fremantle), Brent Staker (West Coast), Jared Rivers and our very own Michael Pettigrew. Petters’ dad worked and played there for a few years and was remembered as a ‘bit of a tough nut’. Petters’ claimed during the week that his old man kicked the winning point in a grand final for South one year, and he would love to visit one day.

Not many flights come and go out of Broken Hill so for the trip home I had the choice of a flight to Adelaide via Sydney which got in at 8:05pm or to drive back with one of the locals. I chose the latter and although this meant that I would not be able to watch the boys on TV, the radio and four hours in the car would have to do.

I got home to watch the final three minutes of our game on TV and loved watching the boys celebrate the win.

As good as it would have been in Perth, I think I made the most of my weekend off and have been reminded how good footy is and how much I love playing this game.

mahns