Eurovision has been a staple for many over the years, however with our participation in the contest now (semi) permanent, we can now have more of a chance than ever to get together with Eurovision fans and do all the fun stuff that the OGAE clubs do overseas.
Only a few weeks back, I had the chance to go to Australia’s second chance round, hosted by our fan group ESCFAN. This was the first event I had the chance of attending, so I grabbed a friend, and went along to the Royal Hotel in Newtown for the Sydney event.
I met some lovely people there, and we all had the same thing in common: we all love Eurovision probably a little too much. Nevertheless, we got on with the program and watched all 18 acts taking place in the second chance round. If you’re unfamiliar with what a second chance round is, it’s essentially a time where a bunch of songs who tried to get into Eurovision (and failed, sometimes by the smallest of margins) are collected and fans are able to vote for their favourite song. A lot of these songs are ones that are hyped during national final season, or fan favourites for one reason or another. This event is done in other OGAE clubs, where they tally the results to come up with an ultimate winner.
Here was the line-up for the second chance round of 2016:
As a dedicated fan, I had heard many of these songs before, or at least of the hype around them. Despite that, it was nice to hear some old favourites in amongst some new tracks which I will be definitely listening to again.
As a bit of a Mikael Saari enthusiast, I didn’t need to think twice about who would win my 12 points. Other than that, it was a hard decision to choose who would win the rest of my votes. I got there in the end, and submitted my votes. A couple of days after, we found out Australia’s official results.
There were events in Sydney, Melbourne and in rural Victoria, plus fans of the Australian group were able to vote online if they couldn’t make it to an event. The results were broken down into city, and then collated into a whole Australian vote. So without further ado, here are our votes!
The Sydney Result:
Finland – 1 point
Estonia – 2 points
Malta – 3 points
UK – 4 points
Hungary – 5 points
Sweden – 6 points
Israel – 7 points
Poland – 8 points
Denmark – 10 points
Norway -12 points