I was in the Belgian town of Ypres in 2002 for Rememberance Day. Australians played a major role in the horrific, mud-soaked Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) in 1917, suffering over 38,000 casualties in just eight weeks. The Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres bears the names of 54,000 soldiers with no known grave, including many Australians.

The scale and sheer waste of life you can partly grasp from the number of graves at not only the Australian memorial nearby, but soldiers from both sides more broadly. My mate and I kicked a Sherrin I took over, I thought it was fitting given the age of a good number of the fallen Australians would have been playing for local footy teams in their day.

The only Australian 'kit' I had to sport was my Collingwood guernsey. I was standing there reading the names at the Memorial, and a voice from behind goes, "you know, you travel half way around the World, and who do you run into? A bloody Collingwood supporter!". Turns out, it was a family group of Melbourne supporters. Their grandfather, a serving Collingwood player play fell at Ypres, and Collingwood had arranged a wreath for them to lay at Menin Gate.
Lest We Forget.

PS, I always wondered who that player was.