The Roar
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What I've learnt in 15 years loving two sports

19th July, 2011
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Roar Guru
19th July, 2011
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2953 Reads

Two weeks ago, when Celtic began their tour of Australia, I made plans with a few friends to attend the match against the Central Coast Mariners.

I assumed that the result was a foregone conclusion – I expected the crowd to be predominantly Hoops fans, I expected a lot of drunken Scots to try and run on the pitch and get tackled, and I expected an easy victory for the Bhoys.

Two out of three isn’t too bad, I guess.

Despite my green and white allegiances, the result wasn’t really a bad thing for anyone. A win against a big European club for any A-League team is good for the game here, whereas Celtic beating what most fans back home would view as a glorified pub team wouldn’t really impress.

‘The Jungle’ as they are known was out in force – filling three or four bays with flags, banners and a lot of singing. Save for one bay of loyal Marinators at the other end of the field, the place was wall to wall with hoops and green scarves. Well, hoops and empty seats. But I don’t want to nit-pick. Anyway…

My friends and I were seated on halfway rather than being in the Celtic fans end, taking advantage of the Ticketek damage-controlling move of offering four Category A seats for the price of one. I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for the hardy souls around me that had shelled out $100 per ticket where I’d only paid $25.

But back to the game; I’d seen Celtic the last time they visited our shores, flying up to Brisbane to watch them easily dispatch of the Roar. The atmosphere then was as impressive as could be for a pre-season friendly, and this Mariners clash was held an air of similar electricity. I was fortunate enough to be with three friends, none of whom I would consider bandwagon football lovers.

I’ve played football with my friend Peter since we were four and we’ve been going to Sydney games in the Cove together since the A-League started. Alex, a Spurs tragic who pretty much lives at White Hart Lane when he travels to England to visit his family, and George, our fourth; the Mariners fan and diehard lover of the NSW Premier League.

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The people behind us were clearly not what you would call football purists – and had come either out of curiosity, or a desire to improve their knowledge of football. The possibility of the latter being the case was quickly quashed… they spent the majority of the time discussing iPhone apps and other sports, which didn’t really bother me.

I’m pretty patient with stupid comments at sporting events having been a South Sydney Rabbitohs season ticket holder for the last three years.

What my good friend George couldn’t ignore to the point that he asked to swap seats with me so he could get away from the “bloody dweebs behind us” was when one of them loudly remarked that the atmosphere at this game was “almost as good as State of Origin…which has the best crowds ever”.

This was what got me thinking.

Unlike myself, none of the boys I was with would consider themselves rugby league fans. I’m as passionate about the Rabbitohs as I am any football team… but ask me to choose between the two sports and its football every single time (this is not a flame, just a personal preference.

They’re both fine choices. But if you’re a white knight for the fine sport of rugby league and are easily offended I’d stop reading now). As someone that’s been to State of Origins, two NRL grand finals, and plenty of regular season games at every ground in Sydney, I don’t think there can be any argument to which sport offers the better fan experience.

Whether this can be attributed to the more intense level that a rugby or AFL match is player at when compared to football (rarely are there injury stoppages, and things like the defenders passing it around to each other and goalkeepers holding on to the ball for several seconds obviously don’t happen) or simply because you get a different type of fan at a football game as you would at an ‘eggball’ fixture, I can’t imagine ever going to say, a Rabbitohs game and getting more involved in the action and the people around me than I would when standing in The Cove.

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I was at the Uruguay game in 2005.

It’s safe to say that no other sporting event in Australia has come near the level of crowd noise and excitement that that night brought.

I was also at the “greatest game of rugby ever played” between the Wallabies and the All Blacks in 2000, and at the 2005 semi-final between the Tigers and the Dragons which, was by far the best crowd I’ve ever experienced at a league match… but probably wouldn’t eclipse the tension level of a regular season match between Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory.

It’s funny, because the football naysayers in Australia will always trot out the same tired stereotypes about the round ball game; that it’s boring, and soft, and a game for foreigners.

I’d like to think that as a sporting nation we’ve outgrown the “shielas, wogs and pooftas” mentality the Les Murray and Johnny Warren referenced back in the 90s.

When the NSL was at its most amateurish and club football in Australia was an anomaly. And that we’ve outgrown the notion that football is only so crowd-orientated because the on-field action is not as enthralling.

Fortunately, the anti-football bias in mainstream Australia grows smaller every day. All of my friends watched Australia’s games in the World Cup. Most will watch Socceroos games.

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Almost everybody I know supports a team in the Premiership (Incidentally, there are roughly five-million Liverpool fans in Australia by my estimate, a dozen of them could tell me where Liverpool is on a map of England) and although the A-League crowd numbers dropped last year, I don’t think it’s in any sort of crisis.

I sat in the grandstand at Brookvale Oval the week after that Celtic game and save for being prompted by the annoyingly over-zealous ground announcer, the place was quiet as a mouse.

You would never need a microphoned hack to yell, “Lets go Sydney” to prompt The Cove into action. Nor the Squadron, or the Marinators.

The number of times I’ve attended an NRL fixture where the home team can only muster a chant in the 79th minute when they’ve been assured victory (again, as a Souths fan in the 2000s, hearing “Roosters! Clap clap clap! Roosters! Clap clap clap!” in the dying seconds of yet another loss has gotten pretty old) is absurd.

And going back to last week, when the Rabbitohs took an unlikely lead, Brookvale was an absolute cemetery for the next few minutes. Only after Kieran Foran scored twice in quick succession did the crowd start to murmur.

And this is where the two sports, and indeed their fanbases, differ. The fan experience at a League game is patchy and inconsistent. Like a beer-soaked rollercoaster with missing teeth. A football game is a sustained buzz; before the game, through the entire 90 minutes of action including the interval, and afterwards.

The Celtic fans descended upon the Sydney nightlife after that game, as they did (I assume) in Perth last weekend and Melbourne on Wednesday. It’s very difficult to imagine that St George Illawarra fans were running wild through Wigan after their World Club Challenge encounter back in February. In fact, it’s very difficult to imagine any rugby league fanbases’ post-game shenanigans that don’t involve a leagues club… or a McDonalds.

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With all this in mind, I was still at ANZ Stadium for the Rabbitohs’ thrilling win in golden point against the Roosters. It took roughly 75 minutes for the crowd to find a voice.

Still, it was nice to beat them.

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