AUSTRALIAN residents and visitors to Phuket gathered today to mark one of the country's most celebrated sporting events: the ''Grannie at the 'G.''

For the uninitiated, and Dan Brown, this is shorthand for the Australian Rules Football Grand Final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Almost 100,000 people turned up at the Australian sports arena while nearly as many packed the bars of Patong's Soi Bangla before noon.

Some Phuket fans were even heard singing the pre-match national anthem. Australian fans have never before been heard singing their national anthem, anywhere, ever.

Australian Rules Football is the strange code of football that the Australians decided to keep secret from the world because they thought it was far too much fun when compared to soccer, rugby league and rugby union.

For generations is has really only been played among Australians, in Australia. At one stage, given the choice of exporting one precious ritual and keeping the other secret, the Australian government decided to let the world know about Foster's Lager.

Even Australia's nearest neighbors, Queensland and New South Wales, were only begrudgingly taught the secrets of the native game a few years back.

Because the male players all wear tight shorts, 50 percent of the sport's fans are women. Exotic rules apply, with players unable to pass the ball by hand unless they strike it first with a closed fist.

Players who catch the ball on the full take a ''mark'' and may kick the ball virtually at their leisure.

Most of the Bangla bars were crowded before noon today, but the throng was especially thick at the Aussie Bar where traditional Aussie meat pies and sausage rolls were on sale.

Bar proprietor Steve Wood said he was pleased with the week, the Aussie throng following several days in which sailors from the USS Ronald Reagan and other warships helped boost trade.

''They were extremely well-behaved,'' he told Phuketwan.

Faded Aussie Bar beer mats still grace some tables, and conversations still often turn to the incident earlier in the year when accusations that one had been stolen by an Australian tourist almost caused an international incident.

This year's ''grannie'' was won in a close contest by the Geelong Cats over the St Kilda Saints.

Some Australians were still at the bars tonight, watching another obscure game, cricket.