Four Straight
New South Wales’ got the Blues, alright, with Queensland taking the rubber in two straight games out of three for the fourth year in a row, and while all credit to them for a fine sporting achievement, the NSW side’s performance was marred from the very beginning by some truly atrocious ball-handling, resulting in egregious turnovers deep within their own territory throughout the night. While in the second half the Maroons started out with some errors of their own, they never faltered in defence, easily outmatching the Blues’ strategy of running sideways along the line looking for a hole that just never turned up.
Olympic Park’s ANZ Stadium is the home field for the Rabbitohs, so I’ve spent many an evening and afternoon there (80 minutes at a time), but I’ve never attended a State of Origin match, or any other event capable of filling the 90,000-seat capacity venue. This one was off that mark by just under 600. It was jam-packed, with queues for food and drink and toilets, and crowds milling through the corridors. It’s an expensive ticket, so I normally wouldn’t have gone, but I had an invite via a vendor, so who wouldn’t jump at such an offer. Of course, your first thought is naturally: sky box! corporate box! – not: ow, my nose! But for all my vertigo being seated so high and at so nearly perpendicular a pitch, I can’t really complain. We were seated in front of and to one side of a group of young men whose enthusiasm for the Maroons could not be contained for a single moment, one in particular of whom spent the entire match foully slanging the NSW side individually and collectively, when not chanting, Queens-land-er, or offering an alternative Queensland-AAH! and managing to instigate a first quarter punch-up – almost – snatching the cap off the guy sitting in front of him following his side’s second try. A bad baiting choice, as the Blues supporter and all his friends were of a size sufficient to use the kid as a toothpick or snap him as easily. Luckily it came to nothing, and for a minute the chants and cat-calls were notably muted, if not entirely silent.
It was a fun night, generally well-behaved coming and going, but I’d still rather have seen the Blues make more of a game of it. Maybe next year.
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2 comments:
Took the rubber, did they? Sounds like a bridge game. Also sounds like the fight in the stands was almost as entertaining as the game.
At baseball games these days, there are cameras constantly sweeping the stands and police who can swoop in at a moment's notice to bums rush the over enthusiastic right out of the park. Not being a fan of too colorful language or fighting, this suits me.
At the Pittsburgh game, everyone was so happy to see their team winning (and it was a homer crowd), there was never a problem. At the Cubbies game, the "bad guys" were noisy but not too vulgar ...and their team lost so they got quite quiet.
The hot dogs and beer at both parks were ghastly. Budweiser lite and soggy buns with boiled hot dogs. we ate and drank most of it all.
The cops appear more concerned with people heading onto the pitch, and we had one of those, too - world's worst streaker (i.e., fully dressed, not during play) - who didn't get very far and was taken into custody with little fuss; but security patrols and monitors the audience throughout.
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