I arrived at Brookvale on Friday night still expecting to care about the result.
Manly’s season had been sliding for weeks, but there was still enough left to make this game matter. Beat the Dolphins and there was at least something to hold on to. After watching an excellent Roosters and Panthers game the night before, I was looking forward to another Friday night of rugby league, this time involving the team I actually support.
Getting there had threatened to become part of the problem. I left work later than planned after getting caught in a conversation, then spent the trip wondering whether I would make the 6pm kick-off. Instead, the buses behaved suspiciously well. I waited about two minutes for the first one, another two minutes for the second during a interchange, got off at Warringah Mall and walked the final kilometre.
Then I reached Brookvale and my ticket would not load.
My phone had one bar of 4G and the Ticketmaster website seemed determined to not work. I stood outside for about 15 minutes watching the time disappear. The Ticketmaster office could not fix my Ticketmaster problem, but pointed me towards the Manly membership tent. They found the ticket, sent it to me by SMS and it opened immediately. For a night that would eventually contain quite a lot of frustration, that was one thing Manly got absolutely right.
By the time I joined the queue, I could hear the introductions inside. I finally made it through the gate and headed towards my seat, expecting the section to be packed. When I had bought the ticket there had been only a handful of seats available.
It was half empty.
My seat was in the front row, right against the fence. I put my scarf over it and settled in with the field immediately in front of me. I could hardly have been closer. The Manly mascots were moving around the boundary, stopping for children, taking photos and collecting high-fives. I caught the end of the Indigenous Round ceremony, having missed more of it than I would have liked.
After the irritation of work, the rush across Sydney and the ticket problem, I was finally where I wanted to be.
Then the football started.
Manly had chances early. Lots of them. At one stage they seemed to spend forever attacking the Dolphins’ line, helped by repeated infringements that kept giving them another set. They went at the line, were pushed back, went at it again and still could not find a way through. Eventually they made a mistake and handed the ball over.
That became the pattern of the night. Something would briefly look possible, then disappear through another mistake or an attack that went nowhere. The Dolphins were not exactly putting on a clinic either. That somehow made it worse.
Late in the first half, a Dolphins player was sent to the sin bin. As he walked off, the ground announcer played Hit the Road Jack. It was one of the few moments when the night seemed willing to provide its own joke.
Not long afterwards, I opened my phone.
That is not particularly unusual during a break in play, but I did not just check a message. I started reading emails and doing some work. Every so often I would look back up at the field, then return to the phone. I knew exactly what I was doing.
I was sitting in the front row at Brookvale Oval while Manly were playing, and I was choosing work instead. I exchanged messages with a colleague who had watched parts of the game on television. He told me it was hard to watch.
Normally I would take a ridiculous number of photos at a game. A hundred would not be unusual. This time I took barely more than ten. After a while I stopped bothering with that too.
The second half briefly dragged me back in.
Manly broke through from deep in their own half, shook off tackles and suddenly had space. The crowd recognised what was happening before the try had even been scored. Everyone around me was up, yelling, finally seeing something that looked like the Manly we had come to watch.
The pass went to the winger. He ran away and scored.
For a moment, Brookvale sounded like Brookvale again.
Then the play was called back for a forward pass.
Almost immediately the Dolphins went the other way and scored in front of me. From where I was sitting it looked as though the ball might have been dropped. Everyone around me reacted the same way. The replay appeared on the screen again and again, and after watching it from the different angles I reluctantly came around to the idea that it probably was a try.
That did not make the sequence feel any better.
The mood around the ground became increasingly tense. There was shouting between opposing supporters near me, while on the field there was pushing and shoving after one heavy collision near the sideline. As the second half wore on, security and police also became much more visible around the ground.
Mostly, though, there was disappointment.
With about 15 minutes remaining I considered leaving.
Not because I needed to get somewhere. Not because the weather had turned or transport was becoming difficult. I simply could not see the point in staying. Manly were not going to score four or five tries in the time remaining. The result had gone.
I stayed.
Then Manly received a penalty within kicking range.
Someone behind me yelled, “Take the two!”
A few people laughed.
Then somebody else joined in.
“Take the two!”
Soon there was a small chant.
“Take the two! Take the two! Take the two!”
Nobody was pretending the penalty goal would help Manly win. We just wanted something on the scoreboard.
Manly did not take the two.
They did not score anything else either.
That little chant probably said more about the night than the final score could. Even with the game gone, the people around me were still trying to drag something from it, even if it was two largely meaningless points simply so the zero would disappear.
I had reached resignation much earlier. I had stopped taking photographs, started doing work and seriously considered walking out before the end.
They were still asking the team for something.
I had largely stopped asking.
After full-time, I put on a jumper over my Manly shirt. The scarf went underneath it, my cap went into my bag, and I headed towards Dee Why looking for something to eat before catching the bus home. Apart from a little maroon and white still showing beneath the jacket, there was nothing to suggest where I had spent my Friday night.
By then the anger had mostly disappeared. What remained was embarrassment and a kind of numbness.
Losing is part of supporting a sporting team. I do not expect Manly to win every week.
I do expect them to turn up.
On Friday night, thousands of Manly supporters did.
It did not feel as though the team had done the same.
