The Best Seat in the Stadium
“There are advantages to watching a game when the result isn’t the most important reason you’re there.”
That probably sounds odd coming from someone who has spent a lifetime living and dying with the fortunes of the Manly Sea Eagles. If you've ever watched your own team play, you'll know the feeling. Every referee's decision matters. Every dropped ball is frustrating. Every try feels enormous, whether it's scored by your team or against them.
This wasn't one of those nights.
It was a Thursday evening at CommBank Stadium. Parramatta were the home side against Penrith, although "home" is a slightly flexible concept at the moment with Penrith playing several games there while their own stadium is rebuilt. That was one of the reasons I'd chosen this game. Local derbies have always appealed to me. The ladder almost becomes secondary. Neighbours simply enjoy beating neighbours.
I wasn't completely neutral, either. Manly have always been my team, but Penrith have quietly occupied second place for as long as I can remember. I couldn't tell you exactly why. Maybe it was the colours. Maybe an old sponsor. Children rarely make these decisions logically. That was enough. Enough to have an interest, but not enough for the result to determine whether I went home happy or frustrated.
The trip from Crows Nest was straightforward. A train to Parramatta, then the familiar walk towards the stadium. CommBank remains one of Sydney's easiest major sporting venues to reach. By the time you leave the station you're already part of a slow-moving stream of supporters, all drifting in roughly the same direction.
I've found myself in Parramatta more often over the last couple of years. Football. Conferences, Horse racing. Now rugby league. Every visit leaves much the same impression. The city feels different these days. Not because every project is finished. It isn't. But it feels like somewhere people spend time rather than simply pass through. The parks are busy, the streets have life and the stadium sits naturally within the city rather than feeling disconnected from it. It's become somewhere I genuinely enjoy visiting.
I'd been here before, but not for quite a while. The old Parramatta Stadium never left much of an impression on me. This place is entirely different. Modern without trying too hard. Close to transport. Easy to walk around. Built for people as much as football.
I found my section, glanced at the seat printed on my ticket and wandered off to buy dinner. When I came back, I didn't sit down. Drink in one hand and food in the other, I stopped near the concourse instead. There was no real reason. I just stood there for a few minutes watching people arrive. Families. Groups of friends. Supporters wrapped head to toe in club colours despite the cold. People carrying fish and chips, pizzas, gelato, coffees and boxes of hot chips back towards their seats. It felt busy.
Then I looked up. Only then did I really notice the seats. There were empty rows almost everywhere. Not just the odd spare seat. Entire sections. The cold Thursday night had probably kept plenty of people at home.
I looked back towards the place printed on my ticket. Then I looked around the rest of the stadium. It suddenly occurred to me that nobody was going to mind if I watched the game from somewhere else.
So I did.
Over the next two hours I sat in perhaps ten different seats. None of them were the one I'd paid for. I'd stay for a while, take in the view, pull out my iPhone, wait for the photograph I wanted, then wander somewhere else and start again. Sometimes I wanted a different angle of the field. Sometimes I wanted a different angle of the crowd. Sometimes I simply wondered what the game might look like from fifty metres further along.
Normally, when I'm watching Manly, my phone competes with the football. There's always the feeling that if I spend too long framing a photograph I'll miss something important. That feeling never arrived. Instead, I found myself waiting for players to run into the frame I'd already chosen. The photograph became more important than the next tackle.
Oddly, I don't think I enjoyed the football any less because of it. If anything, I noticed more.
Parramatta began brightly, crossing for two early tries and giving their supporters every reason to believe they might pull off an upset. Penrith never looked rattled. They simply went back to work. Watching from different parts of the stadium made that easier to appreciate. A defensive line looks different from high in the stand than it does from closer to the sideline. So does a kicking game. Their shape rarely changed. Players seemed to arrive where they needed to be before the play demanded it and, gradually, the game shifted in their favour.
The crowd was just as interesting. With supporters split fairly evenly between Parramatta and Penrith, every significant moment produced two completely different reactions at exactly the same time. A Penrith line break. Half the stadium rose. The other half groaned.
Later, a professional foul stopped play and the inevitable debate began. Around me, one side of the stadium demanded ten minutes in the sin bin. The other looked on in hopeful silence, willing the referee to see it differently. When the referee finally signalled for the sin bin, the cheers and boos landed together. It was one of those moments television probably captures as crowd noise. Being there, you realise they're not one sound at all. They're two completely different conversations happening in the same place.
Without really intending to, I also started watching how people watched. The crowd felt different to what I'm used to at Brookvale. Not better. Not worse. Just different. More multicultural. Families mixed with groups who looked as though they'd come straight from work. Children rugged up against the cold. Supporters wearing not just jerseys but scarves, beanies, hoodies and jackets in club colours. There was a quiet sense that if you followed Parramatta or Penrith, you really followed them.
Perhaps that's what local derbies do. They ask you to choose a side. For one night, I was quite happy simply watching everyone else choose theirs.
The weather had worried me before kick-off. Walking over from Parramatta Station, the wind had been sharp enough to make me wonder what sort of night the kickers were about to endure. It had that unmistakable bite that seems to arrive straight from the Snowy Mountains. Oddly, once inside the stadium, it almost disappeared. The goals kept sailing through. High kicks travelled cleanly. Whether by design or good fortune, CommBank Stadium never seemed to let the wind become part of the contest.
The stadium itself quietly became part of the evening. This wasn't somewhere you simply arrived, watched eighty minutes of football and left. People wandered. Children ran ahead of their parents around the concourse. Supporters stopped for coffee, fish and chips, pizza, doughnuts, gelato or another drink before heading back to their seats.
Years ago, stadium food meant a pie and a can of soft drink if you were lucky. Now someone was happily walking back to the football carrying a proper café coffee. I found that strangely amusing.
One of the unexpected benefits of moving around the ground was seeing how differently the game presented itself from each vantage point. From higher up, attacking shapes became obvious. You could see space opening before the players reached it. Closer to the field, the game felt faster. Bigger. The collisions sounded heavier, the defensive line seemed impossibly close together and you noticed just how little time players had to make decisions.
Every time I changed seats, I found myself watching something different. Sometimes it was the football. Sometimes it wasn't. I watched young children trying to copy Nathan Cleary's goal-kicking routine during the break. I watched people checking other scores on their phones. I watched late arrivals weaving apologetically along rows of seats carrying food that somehow required two hands to balance.
It occurred to me that everyone inside the stadium was having a slightly different experience of exactly the same event. Mine just happened to involve far more walking than most.
By full-time, Penrith had done enough. Parramatta found one final try late, but the result had long since settled. I applauded. Partly because Penrith have always been my second team. Mostly because they had simply played well.
I didn't rush for the station. Instead, I wandered back towards the park and found a seat for a few minutes. Supporters streamed past in both directions. Some disappeared towards Parramatta Station. Others wandered into the city. A few lingered outside the stadium, still talking about the sin bin, a missed tackle or a good try. Before long, the crowd thinned. The park slowly became quiet again.
Sitting there, I found myself replaying the evening. Not the tries. Everything around them.
I'd wandered through a stadium instead of sitting in one seat. I'd taken more photographs than I ever have at a rugby league game, often waiting patiently for the picture rather than the next play. Somewhere along the way I'd spent as much time watching supporters, architecture and the city around me as I had watching football. None of those things would have happened if I'd been watching Manly.
And that's perfectly okay. Some nights are for living and dying with every tackle. This wasn't one of them.
I came to Parramatta expecting to watch a rugby league game. Somewhere between leaving my allocated seat and wandering around CommBank Stadium with my iPhone in my hand, it quietly became something else. It reminded me that the result isn't always the only reason to go.
Sometimes it's the walk from the station. The first sight of the stadium lights. The conversations you overhear in the concourse. The family introducing a child to live football for the first time. The supporters who never stop believing. The chance to see a game from ten different angles instead of one. The photograph you almost missed because you decided to wait another ten seconds. The city that quietly becomes part of the event rather than simply hosting it.
Ground Level has never really been about the scoreboard. The score tells you what happened. It rarely tells you what it felt like to be there.
Walking back towards Parramatta Station, I realised I'd come because a Thursday night derby sounded like an enjoyable way to spend the evening. I went home with something better. Not a favourite try. Not a controversial decision. Not even a memorable finish. Just a reminder that live sport has a habit of rewarding curiosity.
Sometimes all it takes is walking twenty metres to a different seat. Or, in my case, about ten different seats.
Perhaps the best seat in the stadium isn't a seat at all.
