What if ANZAC Day was an Azerothian holiday

ANZAC stands for the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps.  ANZAC day is a national holiday in Australia held every year on 25 April.  It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War, where Aussie and Kiwi troops landed at Gallipoli and fought against the Turks.  It turned into a stalemate and many troops died, and it is a day of remembrance for those who fought on that sad day.


These days ANZAC day is celebrated with a dawn commemorative service (the time of the original landing at Gallipoli) and marches by armed forces during the day in most major cities.

Similar days are represented in other parts of the world - Remembrance Day on November 11th is the same day as Veteran's day in the US which are to honour the armed services, and the signing of Armistice by the Germans that ended WWI, which signified the formal end of major hostilities at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

It wouldn't be an Australian holiday without some sporting event that was held on ANZAC day.  Since 1995 traditional AFL rivals Collingwood and Essendon play a game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on ANZAC day, with an ANZAC medal being awarded to the player in the match who best symbolises the ANZAC spirit - courage, skill, teamwork, fair play and self sacrifice. Sydney (and the NRL), not wanting to fall behind, has followed Melbourne's lead with a rugby league match between St George Dragons and Sydney Roosters, started in 2002. In fact, I think there is football ALL day if you looked hard enough!


Two-Up was a popular WWI game which involved betting on a coin toss - heads or tails.  It is legal, surprisingly, on ANZAC day.

Tacky and Mabaho were discussing how we could make an ANZAC holiday in Azeroth the other day.


The suggested a service at Grom Hellscreams Monument - which can be found in Ashenvale in the South East, at Demon Fall Canyon.  The inscription on the monument is below:


I'm trying to imagine laying wreaths there.  Gosh the thought does make me giggle a little bit.  I can't imagine Grom wanting us to lay WREATHS.  Maybe some battle armaments... look at them and tell me what you think :)



We could have Horde military ranks doing parades in the streets of Orgrimmar or maybe Silvermoon city (there are actual streets there rather than.. dirt track).  Tacky and Mab suggested PVP heroes amongst players.  I think Warcraft War Heroes would be better.  But I don't see that happening so I will have to go to fan art to show you better what I mean...

Image from Gozie.com - I have no idea who the artist is
I thought this was a cool picture and then I realised - wait, an army of Night Elf Sentinels parading through Orgrimmar?  That's an incident waiting to happen...


This image from Are we new at this shows what an Azerothian army should look like.  I think this is in Silithus, around the time of the opening of the AQ gates (gosh those were epic moments!) though a parade of this magnitude would be awesome.  You'd have to have it at some neutral ground though - Dalaran streets or Shattrath City might be a good place.  Gosh, might get a bit tight though in terms of marching room.

And a football game... well, that's easy.  It would  be faction vs faction!  Maybe team names something like Alliance Rangers vs Horde Cowboys (hahaha Tauren pun!) or something.  Gosh, can you imagine an Alliance team full of gnomes vs a Horde team full of Tauren?  That would be funny!  Football battleground... hmm!  I uess it would be kinda of like a returning a flag to base kind of battleground...



I was trying to find something about World of warcraft and football, and came up with this blog post.  It was an interesting diversion.  About fantasty football being played by geeks and not jocks.  Hmm.

Mab reminded me that I had forgotten his and Tacky's idea for Two-up, which was toss a gnome to see if it landed heads or tails.


And I just had to put this video in.  Because it is just damn silly.  And goes so well with the hilarity of this whole post :)  And I have no other post I can squeeze it into for fun factor.

Comments

  1. You forgot the best bits :) the two-up gnome tossing (Throw 2 gnomes up in the air and bet on whether they land on their head or their tails) and of course the celebrations :)

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  2. @Mabaho - LOL I forgot all about those! Now that you mentioned it will go back and edit this post :)

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  3. That was interesting. I'm afraid all I knew I learned from the movie Gallipoli so it's nice to learn more. Yeah, very funny how holidays get turned into football extravaganzas everywhere, lol. When our football schedule comes out we always look to see who's playing on Thanksgiving! Different type of football but still football.

    OH! Four Wheels of Fury! I had not seen that for a while, gotta watch it a few more times!

    And I would give anything to see a Gnome v Tauren match!

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  4. That picture from Silithus is just amazing!

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  5. @TotA - LOL I wish I was smart enough to edit pictures to have that!
    @Akabeko - Isn't it? Gosh I wish my server had looked like that just prior to AQ event.

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