In terms of giving the people what they want – footy – the 2007 Big Day Out in Hanoi was a great success. It started at 2pm and didn’t stop until after dark. That’s a lot of Vietnamese and foreigner handballs.

With the ANZ Bank Handball Board, a continuous stream of children and adults queued up to try their form. Many were super skilled and, who knows, one day may end up playing for the Vietnam Swans – surely a dream of every self-respecting child in Vietnam.

 Inevitably, however, there were others who were less gifted and were therefore challenged by the unusual bounce and strange handball action. Fortunately, there are other codes out there that use nice, round balls with a predictable bounce!

But they all loved the footy and were doggedly determined to achieve success. Each time one of the punters handballed a goal through the hole in the board, the crowd cheered its support. Sometimes the adults unleashed handballs that would have travelled for 35m if it wasn’t for the board interrupting the flight.

The Swans were able to give away the distinctive “goal-striped” QBE Vietnam Swans hats as well as posters from the Sydney Swans. Sydney had sent us posters of their 2005 Premiership team and 2006 Team that were originally intended for last week’s Australian Schools Open Day – but unfortunately they didn’t arrive until 4 days after the Open Day. Sometimes 4 weeks just isn’t enough to get something from Australia to Vietnam! Never mind, the Open Day’s loss was the Big Day Out’s gain judging by the size of the grins. Surprisingly, some of the ladies commented that the Sydney players were even more “dep trai” (“han-some”) than the Vietnam Swans players. Really unheard of!

At 6pm, we packed up and let the kids kick the 4 footies around on the volley ball court. They absolutely loved it – especially the three who went home with a footy each under their jumpers (we can only hope that they use their ill-gotten footies for goodness & niceness and recruit more people to the cause!).

Meanwhile, the Big Day Out continued long into the night with Bands, food and drinks. Clearly, the highlight of the evening was when the MC unexpectedly gave the Vietnam Swans a plug to the crowd and wished us well in the Champs. Awwwwwwwesome.

Photos by Adam Hurley