Aussie Rules tour 2018
 

This may not be the best forum for this kind of question, but I figured I'd throw it out there...

This year's AFL season has been amazing, so I'm thinking about going over next year to see as many matches as I can over about 2.5 weeks. At the moment I am looking at end of May/beginning of June. I've been to Sydney and Melbourne before so I've done the main sights in those places already. This year anyway there have been Thursday, Friday Saturday and Sunday matches most weeks and a few Mondays. I understand the preliminary fixture list for next season won't come out until October.

At the moment I'm trying to figure out some logistics. Obviously Melbourne is the epicenter with a few matches each week. My thought was to arrive perhaps on a Friday and depart 2 Saturdays later. So that would give me about 2 total weekends. I'd like to get to as many venues as I can. Match tickets appear to be pretty easy to come by.

Anyone done a trip like this before? Award tickets to Australia can be a little difficult but I do see some availability at this point. So I'm trying to decide if it makes sense to go in and out of MEL. Or in to MEL and out from SYD perhaps. Internal flights should be easy enough to get to Adelaide for example. Not sure if going all the way to Perth makes sense until the schedule is out.

Thoughts?

Certainly you'd get your most matches with least difficulty in Melbourne, and could hope for my beloved Swannies and GWS both to have home matches on same weekend (same for Crows/Power, Eagles/Dockers) to double up in other cities. I'd envision 2 visits in Melbourne with side trips to the other places. Dunno if you have a favourite team, that might influence things too.

Really hafta wait for schedule to attempt any logistics, IMO. Best of luck!

I just looked through this year's full schedule and it looks like there is only ever a maximum of 1 match in Sydney, Brisbane/GC, Perth, and Adelaide on any given weekend. So seeing both teams in one of those cities wouldn't work out if they draft the same sort of schedule for next year. And then throw in Canberra, Hobart, etc here and there. And it looks like the bye rounds are around the time I was planning to go which cuts down the number of matches.

Yeah I was later on thinking that Sydney & GWS aren't home same round unless playing each other.

I would book in and out of MEL (assuming you can get direct flights from the USA to MEL). Then wait for the schedule to see if it makes sense to grab a quick RT out of MEL to somewhere else.

International to domestic transfer at MEL is the easiest of the three major airports, so if you tacked on a revenue flight out of MEL on arrival or pre-departure it would be fairly straightforward.

Thanks. That's essentially what I've decided to do. But without the direct USA flight since there aren't a lot of options - especially since I am on the East Coast and refuse to fly UA so their B789 LAX-MEL is out and QF doesn't appear to offer any premium class awards to partners. So I booked IAD-NRT-BKK-MEL on NH and TG in business class using UA miles.

Working on the return now, but have plenty of time. I see CX availability MEL-HKG-USA but forgot that AA doesn't allow you to transit via a third region. So I am debating paying for the extra 20K AA miles I would need for two separate awards. They are having a 10% sale plus bonus miles at the moment.

So I'll have the beginning and end booked and can figure out side trips when the time comes. Since there are a million flights per day between MEL and the other big cities and fares aren't too expensive it shouldn't be too bad.

VA flies MEL-LAX direct now. Bookable with DL miles, or presumably VS (since you show them as a program). As a new route award availability has been reasonably good.

Thanks for that tip. Unfortuantely I don't have very many VS points.

Just booked MEL-HKG-ORD-DCA on CX and AA. It was annoying to have to pay all those miles but it made the most sense. And I get a decent overnight in HKG so it will be a nice break to the trip.

If you've got a choice try and go for the big atmosphere games with large supporter bases like Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon. I'm a Hawthorn supporter, wevget a pretty good crowd too. So much fun.

Good point. I think my plan will be to see as many teams and venues as I can squeeze in. It looks like Ticketmaster and Ticketek sell a number of different categories depending on club membership and so forth. Is there a legal secondary market? Like Stubhub here in the US?

gumtree.com.au is like Craigslist. Not sure if there is a Stubhub equivalent.

Try to get down to Geelong for one of their home games at Kardinia Park, usually listed under the current sponsor, which is "Simonds Stadium" in 2017 but will be GMHBA Stadium in 2018.

It's about an hour on the train from Melbourne and a pleasant enough city.

that is definitely among my plans depending on how the match schedule works out

Post the games you end up going to as you might find some Aussies going to the same games. You can feast on a meat pie and sauce with a local.

+1 :)