Denizens of The Bleachers,
Someone in authority had pushed the button on the 2000 Olympics public transport system marked "GO" to give me and The Good Lady Wife a late Sunday afternoon saloon passage on the holiday weekend for Our Queenie's 90th birthday to the Olympic Showground at Homebush for the much-hyped [well, in some parts of Sydney anyway] "Derby X" between the Western Sydney Giants [colloquially known as The Pygmies] and the Sydney Swans.
The old, now re-developed, baseball venue at the Sydney Games was sold out for the first time in its history.
The first sign that anything was going on was a right dandy at Strathfield railway station, dressed in a spankingly tailored bright orange lounge suit, with orange shoes, a white shirt and GWS tie, mincing his way along the platform as if he didn't have a care in the world.
Stumbling onto the train we spied a bloke having a mighty time, and two bob each way
He had a double peaked cap on - obviously he'd cut a Swans cap and a Giants cap in half and got his mum to sew the two front bits together, so he could flip the cap around on his head to show his support for which ever Sydney team he thought was a good thing at the time.
Very clever.
My merch paled in comparison: a GWS 2011 Foundation Member's cap that cost me fitty bucks after foolishly signing up as a Member when the Pygmies were still a year away from playing in the AFL; as a goodwill gesture, more out of pity than anything else really, from a hard-nosed one-eyed supporter and one-time Member of the Sydney Swans; a tatty black jacket with football buttons on each lapel, one showing a photograph of Barry Hall, the other of Adam Goodes; and a red and white scarf that had been stolen by someone from somewhere.
Absolutely no idea how it came into my possession, your Honour, honest.
As for the game itself?
It was the Swans' worst nightmare embodied - right there in front of you from Bay 207.
They were caned, beaten fair and square, and stomped on - thrashed senseless by six goals in a low scoring game as it happened.
Things started to go awry even before it began as we attempted to obtain a Shane Mumford bobble-head for the dashboard of the car, and failed.
Neither love nor money could buy one, on account of it was a "limited edition".
Of course "Mummy" could see the writing on the wall when he was at the Swans when they hired Kurt Tippet and then Lance Franklin, both in controversial circumstances, that there would be no room for him at the Swans anymore, so he was sold to the Pygmies, where he's now having a career-best season at the age of almost 30.
By the end of the day, everyone was asking "who the hell was it exactly who was responsible for letting Mummy go?"
No one has ever owned up.
Put simply from someone who was there [and I'd forgotten just how much of le grand format you see at the ground compared to the crystal bucket] it all started with Mummy - didn't matter who the Swans put in the ruck, Tippett, Sinclair, even Buddy at one stage, no-one could beat him.
The Pygs squashed the Syds mid-field flat in close-quarter hand-to-hand combat - it was brutal fully-fighting stuff all game - and there was therefore no service of the ball to the forwards; and the Swans backline was a complete and utter shambles all night.
In other words, Pygs beat Syds at their own game.
Not to mention the fact that Sydney just didn't turn up to play their cross-town rivals, sucked in by the non-existent hype.
In any case, it only went to show that the Swans can be beaten, and beaten well, as they were, for the first time this season.
There would have been a fair bit of chin stroking and forelock tugging and gazing out to sea for Super Coach Horse, at Monday morning smoko down by the Magic Waters in the secret ocean pool..
Something had convinced me that what was going in the seat behind me could not possibly exist - a rabid, very vocal, knowledgable Giants fan.
Tried my best, but it was difficult to go barrack for barrack with him, when your side is doing so poorly.
Whenever a Swans player was completely crushed in a tackle and given holding the ball, which was often, this bloke was fond of yelling out "Hey [name of Swans player]! Do you want me to wash your underwear for you!?"
The nadir came when Lance Franklin, who was well off the ball at the time, came up to the Giants ex-Geelong hard-nut Steve Johnson when he least expected it, and gave him an enormous hip & shoulder that knocked Stevie J clean off his feet into a crumpled heap on the ground; Stevie got up, brushed himself off, and then gave Buddy an even bigger and better hip and shoulder that knocked Franky flying and he ended up flat on his back. Buddy got up and they glared death stare-style at each other, calling it quits and even - they could have just as well shaken hands and agreed it was a 1-1 draw.
An old style gentleman's fracas - by the time it was done and dusted no-one had realised that the Swans had actually kicked a goal, as all eyes and cheers were on the big fella's - the umpires had no idea it had even happened.
But, as it was all night, the Pygmies got the last say...the last laugh.
For an olde bloke on a stick, Spotto Stadium is a cripples dream.
You can walk the entire circumference of the ground without encountering a single step.
At half time, the beer queues looked long - no matter for me no more - but the smoking lounge was behind the frequently placed dunny blocks near the cyclone perimeter fencing around the whole ground...so at half time, from my seat, it was six steps up and about 20 yards away.
No one, including the police and security staff, cared a blue root that the tell tale wiff of cannabis sativa was floating in from many quarters, mixed in with the tobacco smoke.
It's a very intimate ground too for Rules - the crowd is right on top of the players - never mind the biggest video screen in the southern hemisphere - the field glasses worked a treat when the play was at the other end of the ground.
With a published official capacity of 21,000 they were even selling standing room only tickets behind the kiddies jumping castle in the couple of days leading up to the game, and still 541 extra people somehow managed to sneak in - they were hanging from the rafters.
Despite it being an away game, Swans supporters outnumbered Giants fans by at least three to one.
A most extraordinary thing happened at three-quarter time.
As a silly sponsor's promotional stunt, at quarter-time a "lucky" GWS Member was plucked at random from the crowd and was given a task.
At three-quarter time he was to attempt to punt a football in the shoes he was wearing from the 50m arc into a stack of four Toyo car tyres placed neatly in the goal square on the promise that if he did he would win $100,000, and if he didn't, he would get his car re-tyred with the tyres in the goal square.
Well blow me down if this ordinary looking westie bloke didn't get ball off his right shoe into the most perfect parabolica you have ever seen, and as it came down from its beautiful trajectory, it lightly brushed the inside rim of the top tyre, and went straight in.
[The folks enjoying themselves in the Toyo Tyres corporate box would no doubt have been saying to each other "didn't the boys down in Marketing tell us the chances of dropping a hundred grand on that one were about a trillion to one?].
It was more perfect than the perfect hole-in-one in golf, where the ball comes off the tee and lands in the cup without touching the ground.
The crowd, as one, stood, and went absolutely entirely ape shit.
It was a wild scene, never before heard in my life a roaring sound like that in a jam packed football stadium - it was completely deafening.
Of course the bloke who'd just performed the miracle was a whoopin' and a hollerin' and running around the ground in ever decreasing circles like a chook with its head cut off; his wife and children jumped the fence and ran onto the ground towards him and almost bowled the winner over in scenes of utter jubilation.
The standing ovation from the crowd continued well after it was all over, and and only died down when the players started playing the final quarter.
Sitting next to the GLW was a young lad of say 11-12 years old, smartly dressed in leather shoes, slacks, a pale blue sports jacket with a Swans scarf around his neck.
He appeared to be a student of the game, giving the proceedings his full attention throughout the match.
But when the Giants were kicking towards our end during the last quarter, each time the Giants scored a goal, he would slap his hand hard against his right thigh in disgust, then bury his hands in his head and run his fingers through his lanky blonde hair.
But, as the quarter progressed, and the Giants kicked more goals, noticed that each time he put his head in his hands he was covering his eyes with his scarf - it became obvious he was crying.
As he composed himself, he produced a tissue and gently wiped away the tears from the corners of his eyes.
Drew the GLW's attention to this, and she took pity on the lad and said "oh, mate, it's tough isn't it?" to which she said he replied "yes, m'am, it's bloody hard".
When the full-time siren sounded, the kiddie just lost it, and was weeping uncontrollably.
At first thought...thought...oh, the poor poor childe, but then remembered...ah...the innocence of yoof, when nothing in your life or in the world matters more than the fluctuating fortunes of your football team.
Needless to say, that famly group didn't stay for the presentations, and his mother - noticing that we had noticed - gave us a wink as she filed past our seats and said "it's going to be a long trip home"...
Foolishly, we did stay for the presentation of the White Ribbon Cup and the Brett Kirk Medal for best on ground [ironically won by Heath Shaw of the Giants; younger brother of the recently retired Swans star Rhyce "Rick" Shaw] and hung around his neck by the great man himself, who was looking very chipper.
After endlessly playing the annoying Giants team song at maximum volume over and over and over again on the Tannoy, the ground announcer finally came on and said "and just to finish off, now we'd like you to show your appreciation of the valiant effort put in by the Swans today".
The GLW just shrugged her shoulders and said "doesn't look that way on the scoreboard, mate".
The scoreboard never lies.
But.
There's always next week.
GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY: 2.4, 6.6, 10.11, 15.15 (105). Goals; Greene 4, Patton 2, Johnson 2, Cameron, Whitfield, Griffen, Lobb, Coniglio, Reid, Scully.
SYDNEY: 2.3, 4.6, 7.9, 9.9 (63). Goals: Franklin 2, McGlynn, Sinclair, Rohan, Kennedy, Rose, Jack, Mitchell.
At Sydney Olympic Showground, Homebush.
Crowd: 21,541. (Ground Record).
