Before Us
The birds were there before us.
By the time I found a seat inside Allianz Stadium, there were still plenty of empty rows around me. Tiny birds moved between them, landing on the tops of seats, chirping and carrying on with whatever normally occupied their evenings.
I could hear them clearly.
There was very little coming through the PA. Conversations from ten or twelve seats away carried easily. Occasionally something happening on the field drifted up towards me: television crews moving around, trainers preparing things, security, ground staff. Every so often the screens came alive with a player introduction, a prerecorded interview or some recognition of someone involved in the game.
Mostly, though, there was space.
As more people arrived, the birds gradually disappeared.
It occurred to me that we were disturbing them, not the other way around. For most nights of the year, those seats probably belonged to the birds.
I had arrived unusually early. The trip from the office had been easy, Metro to Central and then light rail to Moore Park, and I had allowed enough time to get inside, find somewhere to sit, maybe eat something and do a little work before the game.
Except the gates were still closed.
They did not open until about half an hour before kick-off, leaving perhaps fifty or sixty of us standing outside with nowhere particularly useful to go. Most were Roosters supporters, with a scattering of Bulldogs fans, including a few dressed enthusiastically enough to attract the attention of the Channel Nine crew filming people near the entrance.
It was not a major inconvenience. It just wasn’t quite the relaxed start I had imagined.
Once inside, only a relatively small section of Allianz Stadium was open. Most people gathered closer to the entrance, while I went further along and found an area with enough empty seats to stretch out.
For reasons I never worked out, there seemed to be more Canterbury supporters around that end.
At the merchandise stand I got talking to the woman working there. She turned out to be a Manly supporter as well, which produced the obvious problem when it came to the women’s competition. Manly does not have an NRLW team.
It is difficult to support a team that does not exist.
So I have increasingly found myself following the Roosters.
Before the game, I watched some of the warm-up from close enough to see how hard the drills actually were. Nothing looked reckless, but there was enough force and speed in them that I found myself thinking about those stories of players being injured during warm-ups.
The surroundings were relaxed.
The football wasn’t.
The Roosters had come into this final round undefeated, ten wins from ten, with the minor premiership already secured. One more victory would give them a perfect regular season.
For the opening part of the game, though, Canterbury made that look much less certain than expected.
Canterbury crossed early only to have the try disallowed, but kept pushing the Roosters. Sydney eventually went ahead 10–0, and I briefly thought the result was beginning to take its expected shape.
It wasn’t.
The Bulldogs came back with two tries of their own and went into half-time leading 12–10.
Suddenly, the little crowd inside the enormous stadium was watching an uncertain game.
I went looking for a hot chocolate.
The night was cold, although Allianz kept most of the wind away, and the combination of hot chocolate and a Portuguese tart seemed a reasonable half-time decision.
There wasn’t much happening around us.
Some of the usual stadium presentation still existed. There were things on the big screens and a choice of songs for the crowd to vote on. Television crews were busy on the field, setting up a temporary panel and moving people around for interviews.
Most of whatever they were producing was clearly for somebody watching somewhere else.
Inside the stadium, we mainly had the football.
Just before half-time I opened the ABC Listen app and started listening to the radio commentary while watching the game. There was a slight delay, but not enough to make it useless. It worked surprisingly well.
A normal radio would be better. I made a mental note for the cricket.
The second half initially continued in much the same way, with Canterbury still keeping the possibility of the undefeated season ending alive.
Then the momentum began to shift. A Canterbury player went to the sin bin, and the Roosters started to find space. They scored once, then again during those ten minutes. By the time Canterbury was back to full strength, Sydney had control of the game, and the momentum kept carrying them forward.
What had been a two-point deficit became a runaway, eventually finishing 42–12.
I had wondered about the atmosphere after an earlier NRLW game at Polytec Stadium. That night had felt unusually quiet and stripped back, and I couldn’t tell whether that was simply the event I had attended.
Allianz was different, but the same quality was there.
There was less surrounding the football, and the football itself seemed to become more central to the night.
The television crew working at the edge of the field was easier to notice. So was the person handling sound, the trainers carrying equipment, the people still arriving twenty minutes after kick-off, conversations several seats away, and the empty sections of a stadium built for vastly larger crowds.
The crowd was small, perhaps only a few hundred people. Roosters supporters reacted to the possibility of the perfect season disappearing, Bulldogs supporters had their half of hope, and then everyone watched Sydney pull the game apart.
Even the price fitted the scale of the evening. The ticket itself had cost ten dollars, although booking fees pushed the actual price to seventeen.
Afterwards, getting home was almost as easy as getting there. I stepped onto the transport I needed without much waiting, there was no great crush leaving Moore Park, and even though it was a Thursday night I never felt particularly rushed.
It had been an uncomplicated night out.
The Roosters had finished their regular season undefeated, and I found myself looking ahead to their finals and wondering whether I might make it to one.
But that is not the picture I think I will remember.
It is Allianz Stadium before enough people had arrived to make it feel occupied.
Empty seats around me.
Very little coming through the speakers.
And tiny birds moving between the rows, going about an ordinary evening until we turned up and took their seats.
