A local newspaper monitored the response in America on social media. One American wrote, "This is like football for clumsy people".

I respectfully hold this up as an example of just how wrong people can be with their perceptions of sport. Australian football is a collision sport for athletes who have the strength and balance to withstand being hit from 360 degrees. It's about getting the ball, and using it to advantage, with lots of people flinging themselves at you.

What distinguishes Australian football from the two rugby codes and American football is that it doesn't have an off-side rule. What it shares with them is the freedom to tackle. Hawthorn's Luke Hodge made a tackle last Sunday that was like seeing a finely timed set of steel levers. If he was a fraction too early, or a fraction too late, it was a free kick against him. He was watching for the precise moment. Like a hawk, now that I think of it.

Hodge is a great player who captains a great side. Week after week they're being required to play matches that have the intensity of finals and the past three they've won by three points. It's been that sort of year, a festival of footy.

If you want to better appreciate the game, a player like Adelaide's Eddie Betts is worth watching because he has conspicuous gifts. One is his judgment, which means arriving at high speed at certain spots on the ground just as the ball does. Another is his skill to bend the ball. An Australian football is hard to kick straight. In Eddie's case, it seems like a piece of elastic connects his kicks to the goals. Like a great golfer, he performs outrageous acts of skill regularly.

He's not big – 173 centimetres or, as you would say, about five feet eight inches – but he's quick. Last week, motoring at full speed, he out-bodied one bigger opponent, then tapped the ball past a second with his foot, then found himself facing Luke Hodge, who had gathered the ball. The last scene in this play within the play was Eddie flying through the air to punch the ball from Hodge's grasp with both fists. Hodge withstood the collision, Eddie spun off, landed flat on the turf, got up and ran on. That's something else Eddie has – courage.

Another player I heartily recommend is known throughout the AFL simply as Cyril. Again, Cyril is not a big man (177 centimetres, about five feet 10) but among his bag of tricks is a prodigious leap. Last week, he elevated to catch the ball and missed it. Coming down, his head was tossing about, looking for the ball, while at the same time his hands felt for it in other places so that the search was simultaneously being conducted in three different places. Here was a young man gloriously alive to the footballing moment. Cyril induces an ecstatic state among his followers.

Another American responding to the Anzac Day encounter said that the game seemed like a lot of other games combined. I get that. Another said it looked like eight different sports. Another said, "What in the world is happening?" Bob Ansett, the American who became long-time president of North Melbourne, told me the first time he saw Australian football he thought it was chaos. I'd say organised chaos.

You have to play as a team, which means you have to think – and also, to some extent, believe – as one. But you also have to find a place for exceptional talents like Eddie Betts and, if necessary, build a team around them. That's the coach's job. He's part alchemist, part architect.

Australian football is always evolving and I have to admit its coaches steal shamelessly from other sports. In recent years, it's borrowed heavily from soccer and basketball.  What we call "the press" has become like an off-side rule, pushing the players into a fraction of the ground. As a result, small, quick, skilful players like Cyril and Eddie (to name but two) are suddenly finding themselves with acres of space. But at the same time the game also has a place for your lanky compatriot, MasonsixtenCox as he calls himself on Twitter.

The action sequences in American football can be things of power and beauty but overall the game, to our way of thinking, is extremely structured. Our game, as African-American AFL writer Gil Griffin will tell you, aligns with jazz and freestyle rap. So much of it is about improvisation. Jumping At The Chance, Gil's book on Americans and AFL football, is being released in late June. I have written the foreword and Mason Cox is one of its leading characters.

The other thing about Australian football – and Gil Griffin gets this as well as anyone – is that it's our native game.  We believe it's a world-class sport whose biggest drawback is that it's played by only a tiny percentage of the world population. And that's where we're hoping you lot come in. Thanks for sending us Mason. Keep them coming.