By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON

By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON

Rappahannock New* Special Writer

Along about this time, with the New Year’s bowl binge over and the hype for the Superbowl just reaching a crescendo, practically every woman in Rappahannock County is convinced that her husband and her sons are the world’s most avid football fans.

But those women should count themselves lucky, no matter how many hours their men spend before the television set. It could be worse — their men could all be Colin Buckles.

Colin isn’t avid. He’s rabid.

He easily wins the title of number one football fanatic, should that honor be awarded on the basis of miles traveled and dollars spent to see a trio of football games.

“Dedicated and devoted — that’s Colin,” said Jim McCullough, who met Colin in Australia and served as his guide and host during a week’s stay with Jim’s family in Washington, Virginia. “The most amazing thing to me is the amount of energy Colin and every other Australian fan of American football has to put into being a fan. It takes a ton of effort for them to get the imformation on players and teams that we are bombarded with daily. And they know more about American teams than 90 percent of American fans.”

“All I want for Christmas^ire some football games,” could have been Colin’s theme song. And that’s exactly what he gave himself.

The 22-year-old Australian flew from Melbourne to Phoenix'for the Redskins’ contest with the Cardinals. Jim picked him up at Dulles the following Saturday, and on Sunday morning, the duo headed for RFK Stadium. Outside the stadium, in between snapping pictures of Cohn in front of the Redskins’ home field, they managed to find tickets for $15 a piece, less than face value.

(Not only was the temperature below freezing, but the odds for post-season play were as long as the waiting list for season tickets.)

After a week in Rappahannock County spent devouring the sports pages and combing sporting goods stores in nearby towns and malls for football memorabilia, Colin caught a flight to Atlanta to watch the Skins pull off a last minute win over the Falcons. Then it was back to D.C. and a hometown bar for the season’s finale against the Seahawks.

“I guess you could say 1’m.a big fan,” acknowledged the Australian, who planned the itinerary of his monthlong vacation entirely around the Washington Redskins. “I am doing some of the regular touristy things but seeing the Redskins was definitely the motivating factor.”

His road trip covered about 28,000 miles by the time Buckle returned to Australia on Dec. 29. When he departed, he hadn’t yet tallied his expenses but he said he’d count himself lucky if he kept to the $3,500 he budgeted for the football sojourn.

Back in Melbourne, Colin is the shop assistant at a milk bar. “It’s quite like a 7-11, a general store kind of thing really,” he said. It took him just six months to save for the football trip. “But I don’t spend much money,” he added, explaining that he lives at home with one brother and his widowed mother.

He’s been a fan of U. S. — style football since he saw a couple of playoff games on Australian television eight years ago. “I loved it. I thought it was a great sport.”

As coverage was expanded to the game-of-the-week format, Colin upped his viewing hours, and when that proved to be still not enough, he joined a team in the