Amadean struts on proudly for the Titans with 749 words below the bar.
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League fans are doing it wrong
There was a footy match the other week, a pretty good one too. As Grand Finals go it was certainly one of the better matches I haven’t attended.
A friend of mine was there:
“The largest boo and the most projectiles I have ever seen thrown at a football game occured simultaneously two tackles after Lyon had been taken out. The penalty to the roosters (essentially given because Hayne was being abused by the entire Manly side for his earlier f$ckup) nearly cause a riot in our section.” [sic]
That...that doesn’t sound great, even apart from his grammar. It doesn’t sound fun, safe or anything remotely ‘sporting’. Norm Provan and Arthur Summons it ain’t.
But there is an alternative. Let me tell you about the Tokyo Swallows vs. the Hiroshima Carp, September 28th, 2013.
Hold on, I’ll save you the Googling. These are baseball teams in Japan’s premier Central League. Yes, baseball. Yes, I know it’s a dull pansy form of cricket. No, I’m not drunk (mostly). Look, give me a second here, ok? I promise this won’t seem so stupid in 400 words’ time.
Since moving to Tokyo 6 months ago, bereft of League we are, my girlfriend and I have become huge Swallows fans. And only part because I get to wear a shirt around town saying ‘Swallows’ in huge letters. Heh. Yeah, that one doesn’t get old.
The reason for this nigh-inexplicable fandom? The crowds.
Now I’ve been part of Game 3 State of Origin, Grand Final and last-day Ashes crowds. Hell, I was at Black Sabbath’s final concert. Being with an amped-up mass of people can be exhilarating, relaxing, scary and wonderful. The Roosters-Eagles Grand Final match would’ve been like this.
But yet I would’ve much rather been at the Swallows-Carp match. Heresy? Perhaps. But not insanity.
The Swallows-Carp crowd was, for want of a better word, happy. Meiji-Jingu Stadium (just across the road from Prince Chichibu Stadium where the Mighty Blossoms play [damn but Japan is hilarious]) was crammed with 38,000 people who were very happy to be there. This wasn’t an important match, but rather an end-of-season bottom-of-table dead rubber. And the sell-out crowd were having a great time.
I know this, because I was dancing and singing along with them.
It goes a little like this: there are two teams playing, and fans arrange themselves on opposite sides of the stadium (home left, away right). Damn near everyone wears the team strip. Pretty girls incessantly walk past with kegs of beer on their backs, or sausages on their front. The action is slow, but evenly paced. Good times.
9 innings of ordinary match are played, so each team is at bat 9 times: there are 9 opportunities for the crowd to sing, dance and encourage their batters. Note the relatively strong contrast with the last Raiders’ game I went to, which featured 80 minutes of an almost silent crowd (except when inviting the refs to do something anatomically improbable).
This singing and dancing may not sound like fun. I can assure you it is, but the fun/not fun aspect of the crowd participation really is the point I’m trying to make here.
The regular game ended 2-2, and so the match went into 3-innings of overtime. The crowd sang louder, the tension mounted, the Hiroshima fans’ syncopated bat-nodding dance became ever more fervid, the Swallows’ umbrella-pushing chant-a-long became even more deep and emotional.
The game ended in a tie nonetheless.
Then something extraordinary happened.
I’d been walking through the crowds under the stadium (on my way to the gents’ or popcorn stands or yakitori bars or whatever) and had, as comes naturally to a League fan, given the opposing fans the finger. They looked at me a bit oddly for this, but I figured they just weren’t as deep into the game as I was.
I was wrong.
When the overtime innings ended. The Hiroshima (the away team), stood up and sang the Tokyo Swallows’ home-run song. They then chanted ‘Arigatou’ (thanks) loudly three times. Then our side of the stadium stood up and sang ‘Victorious Carp’, then chanted ‘Arigatou’.
Then Hiroshima stood up and sang the strike-song of our top pitcher (Miyamoto-san, I have his jersey!). And we responded.
The fans spent 20 minutes after full-time thanking each other for a good, tight, hard, close match. It was electrifying.
I can’t shake the feeling that League fans are doing it wrong.