Not so Silent bob for the Rhinos.
Crowds.
Ive been to a lot of rugby league matches in my short life. The earliest one I can remember was when I was eight. It was Western Suburbs Magpies versus Penrith Panthers. I dont remember much else about that day, except for one thing: the crowd was very, very small. Unfortunately, that tiny crowd severely dented my enthusiasm for league for about six years, which was fine because I supported the Magpies, and therefore didnt have much to be ecstatic about.
The problems with that particular crowd were not only was it small, it wasnt very vocal either. There was nobody shouting out GET EM ONSIDE!!! at the top of their lungs, nobody insulting the referee (I was disappointed with that particular one), and worst of all, fans from each team who were drunk werent beating the crap out of each other. What a dismal effort from the crowd. No one even got arrested. My dad tried bringing me to other games, but they were much like this one: No atmosphere, no passion, and no heart.
Then came the new millennium, and with it, a new team: the Wests Tigers. While I was sad to see the (shockingly bad) Magpies leave first grade, I looked forward to seeing something new at the matches. New attack, defense, style of play, etc. So I went to a couple of games in their opening year. For the first few games, things were improving: the crowd was shouting out appraise, disapproval, garbled nonsense (usually provided by the drunks), declarations of love and affection, and finally, death threats (in that order).
Then one game changed everything. It made me unable to go to a game for four years.
About mid-season Wests Tigers were due to play the Bulldogs at Campbelltown Stadium, so my dad and I decided to go see it. We got there about halfway through Jersey Flegg, and the crowd wasnt exactly big. As time went on, though, the crowd started to build up, and eventually became so massive you had to line at the start of the first grade game to get a meat pie and a beer by half-time. It was only three quarters through the game that we discovered that the crowd record had been smashed. Replacing it was an almighty 18,863, which is excellent for a 20,000 capacity stadium.
And therein lays the problem: there was still no atmosphere. You couldnt tell from the outside hat there 18,000 odd people. It might have had something to do with the fact that we were getting beaten by twenty points, and also the fact that there were as many Bulldogs supporters as there were Tigers supporters, but there was no feeling from the crowd. There was only one good thing about the crowd: most of us joined (even some Canterbury supporters) in on the chant RICKYS A WANKER! several times over. In fact, I believe that lasted a good ten minutes. But not even that could salvage the audiences mood.
It was a while before I went to another game. My spirit just seemed broken (plus I had Foxtel, so I was watching all the games anyway). I basically went into exile from footy matches.
The thing about crowds, in my opinion, is they need to have four things: a healthy contingent of home fans, large amounts of beer (whether or not said beer exits the body or not is inconsequential), meat pies with sauce, and copious amounts of unfair and downright disgusting abuse directed at the referee, favourite ones include: YOURE USELESS, ARE YOU BLIND!?, and @#$%&*% DUMB @#*%. The only game which I have been to in which all four were present happened only a few weeks ago, on a cold Friday night at Campbelltown Stadium. Wests Tigers played Cronulla Sharks, and the crowd was massive. It had been building up slowly as the night wore on, finally culminating in a massive 17,500 something mass of kids, adults, and blind drunk people.
This crowd had a lot of things: lots of hometown support, beer flying everywhere (in some cases literally; I almost got beamed in the head by a VB can), really nice Sharks supporters who werent terribly upset they lost, and lots of Sharks supporters who were REALLY pissed off they lost. And of course, lots of unhealthy abuse directed at one Paul Simpkins and also star halfback Brett Kimmorley, much of which was provided by yours truly.
Ah, crowds. When theyre on, theyre on.
748 words, including title.
