MINI: The 49ers' Aussie Adventure

The San Francisco 49ers and entourage embrace Aussie culture as they prepare to take on the Los Angeles Rams in Australia's first ever regular season NFL game at the MCG.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
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Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, this is the Christian O'Connell Show Podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
This Friday at the NCG, Ellie Rams take on the
San Francisco 49ers. What has been lovely is to see
the genuine... Love, appreciation, and enthusiasm for not just the
coaches and the players of the 49ers. The Rams aren't
here yet. They've decided what fools to fly over the

(00:49):
day before the game. 16-hour flight. You barely sleep on
those long hauls. I was speaking to someone who's done
a lot going back to the UK. You don't sleep
very well. And they're all being on a flatbed, I know,
but you won't sleep very well. Sport is a game
of increments and margins. They're going to turn up knackered.
And then there's the massive time difference, jet lagged.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Yeah, they'll be groggy.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
And they've got massive apes smashing into you.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
It feels like a bit of a slap in the
face as well. It's like, you don't want to spend
some time over here? You'd rather be jet lagged?

Speaker 1 (01:15):
49ers were down the road yesterday at Amy Park having
their first practice, and they've been going around the city. Now,
I don't know how much it cost Melbourne to have
it here for the next couple of years, but I
think that is a great tourism move. You've got all
these Australian commentators, bloggers, and sports reporters in Melbourne this week.
going around, hanging out, discovering what a great city it

(01:36):
is in Australia, and falling in love with it. Like
this guy, who I've now started following on social media,
writes for Sports Illustrated, one of the biggest sports magazines
in the world. Grant Cohn is going around basically eating
and drinking his way around Melbourne. It's a great week.
He's fallen in love. Just listen to him rave about this.
He went for fish and chips. this week in Melbourne.

Speaker 4 (01:57):
I'm back on my Australia quest. This time I'm getting
a late lunch at Hunky Dory and I'm getting fish
and chips which we have in America. It's usually cod
or snapper. So what I got on my plate I
have flake. Australian flake which is fried and battered shark.
I got two potato cakes which some Australians call potato scallops.

(02:21):
I also got a calamari ring and A seafood stick,
which is fried and battered crab meat.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
How much food do you eat?

Speaker 4 (02:29):
Which are French fries, and they are covered in chicken salt,
which I don't know what that is. Never heard of it,
but it sounds great. This is delicious. That's fantastic. I
don't know what I was expecting. I thought it would
be tough. You know, get off my table, Mr.

Speaker 5 (02:44):
Pigeon.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
Because, you know, sharks are tough.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Do you not have Heinz?

Speaker 4 (02:48):
Have you not heard of Heinz? Do you not like Heinz?
What is the deal? I feel like Americans would flip
out if ketchup ceased to exist. This is delicious.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
On the plate is Christian McCaffrey. They're all falling in
love with the coffee.

Speaker 5 (03:00):
Oh, it's been great. Yeah, the coffee's unbelievable. I don't
know why nobody talked about that as much as they
should have beforehand. Coffee's been great. Food's awesome. The people
are really nice. Yeah, I mean, it's been a really,
really cool experience for all of us.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
The power of this as an advert to come to
Australia and explore it is brilliant. This is the 49ers coach,
Carl Shannon, trying to get his head around time travel
because when you do fly to Australia, it is like
time travel. It's not going to another planet.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
Is there something about Australia that surprised you the most
so far?

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, that I don't see kangaroos and crocodiles everywhere. I
was expecting to see that and it looks like a
very normal, cool city. When I look at my clock
and it says the time, and then I try to
see my family's time, and then it says the time,
but it says yesterday. I don't even get how that's possible.
So I feel like I'm in the future. And then
also when we play on our Friday, which I think
is a Thursday in the U.S., we're such creatures of habit.

(03:53):
So I call today Tuesday. No, wait, sorry, I call
today Wednesday, which is the first day we put in
a game plan. But I think it's Monday. However, though,
it's Sunday in the present. I'm going to mess that
up all week if you guys ask me. But today
is just our first day of the game plan, which
is a Wednesday. We'll put in some on a Thursday. Saturday,
we walk there when we play on Sunday, which is
a Friday in Australia and a Thursday in the US.

(04:14):
So don't ever make me do that again.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
I'll tell you what, they're so much more entertaining at
press conferences as well. This guy could be stand-up. He's
killing up there. And then one of the coaches celebrated
his birthday on the flight over and lost it.

Speaker 6 (04:27):
Raheem Morris turned 50 years old. Last Wednesday, he turned
50 the day that they were in the air, and
he lost his 50th birthday due to the travel that
they had to Australia. So he didn't really have much
of a 50th birthday, but that's the way it goes.

Speaker 4 (04:45):
For the opener.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
I guess Australia to Americans will be the strange and
very foreign land. I saw yesterday on the news they
were saying 60% of Americans don't own a basketball court.

Speaker 4 (04:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
So they really don't understand the rest of the world.
I think they still think the Queen is alive and
running the UK. And this place, they've got no idea.
Which is why they're like, wait, you've got coffee? Oh,
my God, it's flipping amazing. It's like a child discovering things.
I've got an article here that I read yesterday that
made me laugh. The good and not so good about Australia.

(05:17):
These are not my words. These are of an American.
I want to get on a show called Grant Con.
Have a listen to this. See what you think. The
good and not so good about Australia. I've been in
Australia three days, which now makes me an expert on
the continent and its culture. Here's the good and not
so good about it. This is from sports writer Grant Kahn.
The good, the accent. It's not like Scotland where people
allegedly speak English, but the accent is so thick it

(05:39):
sounds like another language. I can understand Australians. And their
accent is fun. Every vowel is an adventure. It will
start with one sound, then slide to a completely different
sound in the same syllable. The coffee. It's as good
or better than the coffee on the West Coast of America.
It's not served with half and half. Half and half
is like full cream and.

Speaker 5 (06:01):
And skim.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
And skim, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (06:02):
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Wow. What a way to ruin a drink. They serve
it black, sort of like an Americano, or they make
something called a flat white, which is kind of like
a latte. Both are delicious. Three, meat pies. Amazing. They're everywhere.
You can get a mass-produced microwave 4-in-20 meat pie at Stadium.
slather it in ketchup and eat it in 30 seconds
and you won't die we've got to get on the

(06:24):
show it's a funny dude or you can get a
really tasty one from a bakery and enjoy it i
had the 4 and 20 version pot and a palmer
the pot it's a small nine ounce glass of beer
so it doesn't get cold and the palmer is go-to
pub food in australia it's essentially chicken parmesan with some
ham on it so it's like chicken palm cordon bleu
it's way better than it should be Australian rules football.

(06:47):
He's fallen in love with Australian rules football. There are
36 punters varying five foot eight to six foot ten
running a half marathon whilst constantly punting and punching the
ball with tackling from any direction. Punt through the sticks
more than the other guys to win. Very good explanation
of all these players are deadly accurate at punting. I

(07:10):
don't know what game he went to. He hasn't seen
any of these games. He wouldn't say deadly accurate. LAUGHTER
It's a game that meshes unusual skills with toughness and violence.
I'm hooked. MCG is where the 49 round will play.
It seats about 100,000 people. The field is a giant oval,
which is roughly 200 yards long. We don't have fields
like this in America. It looks like a battlefield from

(07:32):
medieval times. And they sell those delicious meat pies here.
And then he's falling in love with Patrick Dangerfield. One
of the best plays on the Geelong Cats, which is
essentially a suburb of Melbourne. And home to my favorite
team in the AFL since I learned about the sport
two days ago. This guy is 36 years old and
still kicks ass. He took over a game two nights

(07:53):
ago against Carlton Blues by scoring five goals. It was
one of my best performances I've ever seen in my
two days of watching the sport. The not so good.
The driving. This is every person's experience when you move here.
You're terrible drivers. Excuse me. Number two, magpies. Gorgeous black
and white birds. They will swoop down and ruin your day.

(08:14):
The metric system. I don't know what the temperature is
outside or how much weight I'm lifting at the gym
or how fast I'm going on the treadmill. And then
this is an interesting one. The burritos. This is what
Australia isn't great at.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
I'll agree with that.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Really? Yes.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
Because we just don't have a big Mexican population in
Australia like they do in America. And the burritos over
there are something else. Really?

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah. As I wrote before, Australia and California have a
ton in common. Mexican food is not one of them.
I went to a Mexican place yesterday and said it
was Mission-style place, so I was intrigued. But the burrito
was 50% sour cream, and the lady at the register
wouldn't give me any salsa to go, which hurt my feelings.
Is it because I'm American? Christian, really enjoying all the

(09:01):
San Francisco 49ers stuff. They all sound so lovely and funny. Also,
it's really nice. Have anyone been just bagging on Melbourne
for last year? They have. It's actually really nice, people
discovering with fresh eyes, And seeing all the lovely things
about it as well. Kate, beautifully said. Christian, half and
half is not half full cream, half skim. I made

(09:22):
that assumption my first trip to the US. It's worse.
It's actually half milk, half cream. Oh, that's a heavy
old coffee. Yeah, that's every drink. Hello, diabetes. The Christian
O'Connell Show.

Speaker 5 (09:35):
Go on.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Podcast.