Australian Rules Football Player Climbs Up an Opponent’s Back to Make Spectacular Catch [Video]

This comes from the Australian Football League. The title is simply “Walker on a high.” What does that mean? Who knows. Maybe the description of the video would help. “Carlton’s Andrew Walker takes an absolute hanger.” OK. So we now know the guy’s name and what team he plays for. What he actually does could be anyone’s guess.

[watches video]

Whoa. I’m not sure what happened before or after this, but I know this was spectacular. Turns out his teammate punts the ball from about 30 yards away and Walker jumps on an opponent’s back, kneels there for a couple seconds and then stretches out to make what looks like a really difficult catch. It’s like an outfielder climbing a wall to rob a home run, but the wall is a person who is also trying to catch the baseball and the wall is trying to tackle you and dump you on your head. Or it is nothing like that.

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13 Responses to “Australian Rules Football Player Climbs Up an Opponent’s Back to Make Spectacular Catch [Video]”

thekidhimself Says:
March 8th, 2013 at 11:33 AM

unfortunately in the NFL that would be called passing interference

Der Kaiser Says:
March 8th, 2013 at 11:35 AM

I believe this is the sport where someone throws the ball from the sideline and a bunch of your teammates lift you up to catch it. Also, why wear booty shorts? It’s like they are stuck in the 70′s.

squawkbox Says:
March 8th, 2013 at 11:37 AM

Scholly from Saban?

squawkbox Says:
March 8th, 2013 at 11:40 AM

Since TBL has a instituted a self-imposed 3-day delay on supplying interesting links … here’s one that some of you may have already seen 1 day ago:

Atlanta Mansion with full size baseball diamond

Nada Says:
March 8th, 2013 at 11:56 AM

Look at all those empty seats in the video. One must assume TV ratings are way down for Aussie rules football, or this particular team is ripe for contraction, amirite?

Sopwith Camel Says:
March 8th, 2013 at 12:33 PM

unfortunately in the NFL that would be called passing interference
or a touchdown
/seahawk’d

ticky Says:
March 8th, 2013 at 1:32 PM

I believe this is the sport where someone throws the ball from the sideline and a bunch of your teammates lift you up to catch it.

No, that’s rugby.

Also, why wear booty shorts?

Same reason soccer players do. The less fabric, the easier it is to run/kick/move.

Look at all those empty seats in the video.

It’s pre-season.

brentcue Says:
March 8th, 2013 at 4:57 PM

It’s the Australian Football League (www.afl.com.au) pre season competition with trial games, hence why there are a few empty seats

George77 Says:
March 9th, 2013 at 6:39 PM

@ Der Kaiser – Wrong game. That’s rugby union. As for the shorts, welcome to football sports outside your country. Rugby union, Rugby League and Soccer all generally wear the shorter shorts as it’s easier to run/leap/bend/kick. I don’t think Aussie guys would like to wear tights like they do in NFL and basketball shorts would make them easier to tackle.

@ Nada – It’s a preseason trial match. They play more kids and rookie players, use different rules and it’s not taken so seriously. In the season proper, the player’s team can draw crowds up to 90k and averages around 50k to each game. TV ratings for games are the highest in the country and have recently been sold for a record price.

Taggath Says:
March 9th, 2013 at 8:17 PM

It’s a crying shame that the vast majority of the USA’s 330 million people are ignorant of Australian Football’s existence. It’s fast, hard, high scoring and skillful.

It takes a while to get to grips with the nuances of the rules, but the basics are pretty simple and some time spent coming to understand the game is well rewarded.

Season proper begins March 22, and it’s definitely telecast to the US – on Fox Soccer, I believe. Go West Coast!

zhondrou Says:
March 9th, 2013 at 10:31 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERTcZV7uTFU

It’s not the first time he’s done it!

ps. empty seats in this one as well because game was over a long time beforehand and all the essendon supporters left… and the stadium holds 100,000..

Jrogers Says:
March 10th, 2013 at 5:01 AM

Do Americans realise how ignorant the rest of the world think they are? No background research done here by the author of the article or the American commenters. The “catch” displayed in this video is called a mark, and it is an occurence that happens 100s of times a weekend during the games. Some are more spectacular than others obviously though (watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax-kcnptb_w for examples).

According to a video i just watched aimed at recruiting young American athletes to the Australian Football League (AFL, or footy as we Aussies lovingly call it), it is the third most attended sport in the world, our main footy stadium is bigger than any NFL stadium in America, and it’s the 10th largest stadium on Earth. I don’t expect the majority of the American public to know our brilliant game, but they should expect that games other than gridiron are played throughout the rest of the world!! I feel it’s quite insulting having the NFL comparisons here. Still, i am grateful that the big lead has taken the time to actually put this on their website.

Bella Says:
March 10th, 2013 at 5:48 AM