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Sometimes, you have to see things through someone else’s eyes to get the true picture.
Walking out of Brookvale Oval – sorry, 4 Pines Park – on Sunday afternoon with my parents, in town visiting from the UK, my father remarked upon the sold out crowd and how it appeared to almost entirely be locals, Manly folk cheering on the Manly team.
Was it like this in AFL, he asked?
I replied that he had inadvertently hit upon one of the great talking points of Australia’s endless code wars, the debate between centralisation of stadia, preferred south of the Barassi Line, and suburban grounds, to the north.
With the Inner West Council currently playing politics over the future of Leichhardt Oval, it has been brought into focus.
In two year’s time, according to reports on 2GB Radio, the local authority will remove the safety classification for the stadium on health and safety grounds.
This might be a bit dramatic, and looks from the outside like a fairly naked grab for funding from the NSW Government that has so far not been forthcoming.
It is estimated that $40m is needed to get Leichhardt up to code for NRL games, and since the arrival of the Labor government under Premier Chris Minns, it has been made clear that public sector payrises are more valued than sporting infrastructure.
That debate isn’t for these pages, but the discussion of why rugby league continually favours the old over the new is one that isn’t going away.
It’s an enduring topic because there is no end in sight.
A combination of Sydney geography, public transport infrastructure and rank stubbornness means that none of this will change, though the greater question is not whether it will but rather whether it should.
Think of it this way around: they put the sold out signs up at Brookvale on Sunday, just like they did at Penrith and Cronulla on Friday night and at Parramatta the week before (stop sniggering at the back).
Could they have sold more tickets had those three games been played elsewhere? Almost certainly. Would it have been as good? Almost certainly not.
In the AFL, where all the Melbourne teams are centralised around two stadiums, they think completely differently.
I took my father on the tour of the MCG and it was barely noticeable who played there at all, and that something had probably been lost to the league as a result.
Whereas it was noticeable how local the crowd was at Manly, there seemed to be little that linked Hawthorn the team to Hawthorn the district.
Hawthorn, however, average 33,000 for every game, which would tie them with the Broncos for top in the NRL, but is only good enough for midtable in the AFL rankings.
Crowds at the MCG. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
That’s the way they went and it’s fair to say that it’s worked for them in getting bums on seats.
Doubtless Hawks fans don’t feel like they’ve lost out by not playing at a tumbledown suburban venue.
Meanwhile in Sydney, it is as if the NRL has doubled down on the nostalgia.
This weekend, six of the eight games are taking place in Sydney, including a Saturday suburban ground triple header that could have been ripped straight out of the mid 1980s.
For a national sporting competition, seven of eight will take place in the confines of the old NSWRL with only New Zealand hosting a match outside of the original state.
Canterbury will host the Gold Coast at Belmore Oval at 3pm, followed by the Dragons v North Queensland at Kogarah Oval and the Tigers v the Sharks at Leichhardt Oval.
If you’re a rugby league trainspotter, this is manna from Winfield Cup heaven.
It’s just 20 minutes in the car (and probably another 20 parking) or 45 minutes on public transport from Belmore to Leichardt, so it’s entirely doable to go to both games, if you can get a ticket.
This is, of course, a little bit of a scheduling fluke in that all three of those games are secondary grounds, and on another weekend, it might be Campbelltown, Wollongong and Homebush as the venues, not to mention games in Queensland, Victoria and Canberra.
The Bulldogs have parted ways with their CEO. (Photo: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
But that fans will attend the slightly ramshackle confines of the older grounds, and love it, speaks to the enduring appeal of those venues.
Last year, the Dogs sold out both games at Belmore for an average of just shy of 17,000, only 1,000 less than all games played at Homebush, including finals.
The only games that beat that number were the Good Friday clash with Souths and the Queen’s Birthday game with Parramatta, showpiece events bolstered by fans of the opposing team.
For the Dogs’ home advantage, it makes sense to schedule games at their spiritual home.
Would you prefer a full Belmore or 10,000 rattling around Accor Stadium, as has been the case for the bulk of fixtures in recent years?
Similarly, the customer experience in the older ground might be worse in terms of facilities, but is it better in terms of, well, experiences?
Much as we laugh at the hill and the trains going by, it’s certainly got a lot more character than the big empty bowl. Well, it does until it starts raining at least.
Ditto the Tigers at Leichhardt.
They have abandoned CommBank Stadium and Accor Stadium entirely this year in favour of Campbelltown and Leichhardt, in the hope of building a better atmosphere in stadiums that are, for better or worse, entirely theirs.
For a club that can’t decide what its identity is, playing at a ground that was either split with three other teams or entirely Parramatta’s didn’t help.
The central question will always be one of taste.
Leichhardt and Belmore scream rugby league. The sport bleeds out of them.
For a game obsessed with its own history and taken in by an attitude that remains resolutely with and for the working class despite the modern game being as corporate as any other sport, these places matter.
Brookvale Oval (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Funny as it is to point out how Northern Beaches locals don’t like to travel over the Spit Bridge, the stay-at-home Manly punters have a point: if they were bothered about watching the game properly, they could do so on their sofas for far less money.
The reason we go to games is because we love the experience. Yes, the beer is expensive, the queues are long, the toilets are dirty and you might get rained on.
But you’d trade ten corporate experiences in the soulless down for one of those afternoons in the game’s run-down cathedrals when the sun shines, the crowd is packed tight and the game goes to the wire.
That’s why we’re still at Belmore on a Saturday arvo. It’s why they should find the cash to make Leichhardt viable. Not nice, just viable.
It’s why rugby league won’t give up on the old grounds yet. It’s where it keeps its soul.