Aussie Rules Catch of the Year Goes to Player Who Didn't Complete the Catch By NFL Standards

Nic Naitanui won the Weet Bix AFL Mark of the Year award at the Brownlow medal count on Monday. If none of the nouns in that opening sentence make sense, I’m right there with you. No – wait! I know what “year” and “Monday” mean in the context of that sentence. The rest was a bit of a blur though. Here’s what I learned through some Googling.

Nic Naituanui is an Australian Rules Football player.
Weet Bix is a “high-fiber and low sugar breakfast cereal biscuit.”
A mark is “the action of a player cleanly catching a kicked ball that has travelled more than 15 metres (49 ft) without the ball hitting the ground.”
The Brownlow medal count is the AFL end-of-season award show.

Now, as you can see in the video below, at the end of the play, Naitanui jumps over three people, kneels on their shoulders, makes a great catch, and falls to the ground. Pretty awesome play. It’s great that the AFL rewards awesome plays. However, if you watch to the end of the video, the ball appears to come out at the end of the play. In the NFL, this would not be a catch. (Probably. Who knows with NFL rules.)

" The winner of the @Weet_Bix Mark of the Year for 2015 is Nic Naitanui! http://t.co/NtjBqzQhri — #AFLGF (@AFL) September 28, 2015 "

Finally, and probably most importantly for the pageviews of this post, the woman holding Nic Naitanui’s medal in the picture at the top of this page is his girlfriend, Elle Demasi. She is a catch. She’s a teacher. Who also appears to do some modeling.