We’re approaching the summer months here in the Northern Hemisphere, and you know what that means: we’re approaching the winter months in the South! But it isn’t just time for grade-school geography, we need to visit the Land Down Under for the newest TonySPN. It’s time for footy… Aussie rules football, that is.

You might have come into this Friday Know-It-All thinking we didn’t need another football game. After all, we already have American football, football classic (aka, soccer), Canadian football, futsal, soccer-baseball (aka, kickball), foosball, swamp football (which is exactly what it sounds like), and the incredibly-named jorkyball.

So why do we need an Australian version of The Beautiful Game? Because Aussie rules football dares to ask one important question: What if football kicked Auss? (I’m unclear about whether I can swear in these.) [Ed note: “Ass” is definitely fine – Ruby]

The game might bear the most resemblance to rugby, at least from watching it and seeing the players’ equipment, but it’s like no rugby or football game you’ve ever seen. The Australian Football League has a handy video explaining the sport, and it doesn’t just explain it, it makes Aussie rules look like appointment television… if there wasn’t a 15-or-so hour time zone difference between Central Time and Australia.

The main difference between Aussie rules and rugby, as far as I can tell, is that the object of Aussie rules isn’t to run directly into a mosh pit for the entire game. Aussie rules is fast, with players (18 on each side!!!) trying to advance an oblong ball down an oblong, almost circular field. There are three ways teams can do it, basically: by running, the handball (their equivalent of a forward pass), and punting it down the field.

There’s a catch to all of these. To run the ball forward, you have to bounce it off the ground every 16 yards. And no, I have no idea how officials measure that. Since the ball has a shape similar to American footballs, every dribble is a risk, as there’s not much margin for error before the ball flies in another direction.

While you might expect a player to throw the ball forward like a quarterback, that’s against the rules! Instead, you have to punch the ball with a closed fist towards a teammate. That sounds rad, but the kicking is even better.

Players can drop-kick the ball down the field, where they try to hit teammates accurately, and in stride for a catch. If the kick is over 16 yards, the offense stops the play and will “mark” the spot for an uncontested free kick. This advantage is crucial, which means these kicks will generate a ton of jump ball situations. That’s where the fun really begins.

Most sports confine your jumping ability to merely how far your own legs can power you off the ground and into the air. Not Aussie rules. You’re able to jump onto opponents and use them to launch yourself in the air, with some players propelling themselves up to snag balls 15 feet above the ground. Imagine Randy Moss bouncing off some Green Bay Packer’s helmet for a touchdown, and you’ve got the idea. The move is called a “speccy,” and it has to be seen to be believed.

Seriously, here’s another one of these. It’s absolutely wild.

And this is all before the scoring. The way teams pick up points is by kicking the ball through a goal, which is a mix of a soccer goal and American football field goal posts. In fact, there are two sets of posts, which award two different sets of points.

Kicking the ball through the two center posts awards a team six points, or a “goal,” but missing a goal isn’t the end of the world. There are two more posts on the outside, and sailing the ball through one of them (or hitting the central posts without the ball going through) will give you a “behind,” which is worth a single point.

To sum it up, it’s basically the Chardee MacDennis of sports, taking everything cool about every sport and mixing them all together. You can see the DNA of soccer, football, and rugby, of course, but the game is played on a cricket pitch, it starts with a jump ball, has bone-crunching hits with runners in full-stride like hockey, and kicking down the field for marks even has an ultimate frisbee vibe to it.

AFL is not just the most popular sport in Australia, but the massive crowds that watch the league give it the world’s fourth-highest average attendance out of any domestic sports league in the world, according to the league, which sounds unbelievable, but the guy in the AFL video has a trustworthy-sounding accent, so I’ll buy it.

But while I trust, I also verify via vigilant research. I asked the biggest Aussie rules expert I know: My dad, who attended a single game in 1986, while he was in the Navy. “Yeah, yeah, they fill that up,” he responded when asked if these attendance numbers seemed realistic. “Lots of chanting from the fans. Where we sat, we were on field level, sitting on a hill, and we had locals explaining some of the rules of the sport to us.”

What did he remember most about the game? “We got a picture with the umpire. He was wearing a hat with a suit and tails.” No way!

And it’s true! Sort of! The umpires used to have incredible style, though it appears that tails weren’t a part of the initial uniform. Upsettingly, these uniforms changed in 2013, when the uniform set changed to lime green shirts and grey trousers (though they can switch to blue should the uniforms clash with the teams’ colors).

After hearing about the umpire attire, I asked the hardest-hitting question of all: What did he think of Aussie rules? “It was pretty cool.”

If you’re wondering, “Hey, where’s the ‘Ted Lasso’-style show about Aussie rules football?” I’m right with you, but if it’s any consolation, we at least have six minutes of Conan O’Brien trying his hand at the sport. It’s a circle of trust.

Will Aussie rules football ever expand to the United States? It’s grown some reach outside of Australia, but usually with its geographic neighbors. Wikipedia notes that it apparently gained a cult following in the United States during the ’80s, and that ESPN broadcast those matches during their early days. Maybe that’ll happen again, it sure seems like a great fit for “The Ocho.”

If you and 17 friends want to start an Aussie rules team, though, hit Trivia Mafia up. We already have a company kickball team. Seems like a logical next step for us.