Loyalists,
Sydney Olympic Park was "mayhem" on Saturday night, with 130,000 odd people packed into the precinct.
About 80 thousand were in at Cathy Freeman Stadium to watch the visiting Arsenal soccer team beat the Western Sydney Wanderers 3-1, me and the Good Lady Wife were in next door with 20,000+ others at Spotless "Spotto" Stadium [aka the 'new' Sydney Showground] to witness the Mighty Swans beat the Hapless Western Sydney Giants, another 20,000 were in at the Olympic Indoor Stadium to gasp at the Disney On Ice Spectacular, while another 8,000 or so were in the Exhibition Halls at a trade show called the "Man Cave Experience".
WTF?
All at the same time.
Yep...and it all worked perfectly - seamless - transport arrangements on-song, no crowd crushes, no queues, a low key security presence, and the only police we saw all night were two cops mounted on horseback.
Indeed, the place looked only moderately busy.
It was all designed to work like that 17 years ago, and it still does - a classic example of 'if it's not broke, why fix it?'.
With much trepidation, paid good money for some cheap tickets just before the match was sold out a few weeks ago, after going to the same game last year only to see the Swans lose by six goals, their biggest loss of the entire 2016 season.
Dreadful, it was.
But my presence was now required to reverse The Mock, otherwise there'd be a ban on me from ever going again in case they lost and it was my fault.
JPK won the toss and decided to kick towards us in the cheap seats at the Scoreboard End.
Yippee...that means the game will be down our end during the all-important Champo.
Then there was a minor "brush with fame" as the GLW, who's superlative at these things, spotted Steve Bisley moving along the row of seats in front of us with a tray of beers.
She described him as "looking rather shoddy", which was about right, and seeing he was sitting in the cheap seats, we concluded that he must be a bit short of work at the moment.
Toby "Fucking" Greene kicked the first two goals of the match for GWS, and was then barely sighted for the rest of it, after SC Horse instructed Reg Grundy to tag him and take him out.
What he might lack for a yard or two in pace now as an old man, Grundy of course more than makes up for in vast experience and footy smarts, he squashed Greene, who in my book is the dirtiest, filthiest player of his generation - fined and suspended already this season, so won't be winning no Brownlow.
Don't get me wrong,Tobes is a very good player, no question, but he's a thug - so Reg stood over him and was constantly in his face.
Half way through the last quarter, Toby was fully cooked and the Swans players were continually pushing him around off the ball like a rag doll for no reason, and he had a hang dog look on his ugly face betraying that he was very sick of it, because he couldn't fight back, as he was too buggered.
J.Patton for GWS was also taken care of after the first break by Rampe & Co, before he did himself a mischief and couldn't kick any more.
Bonus.
Odd Head McVeigh, also an old man with an old head, had a great game - to see him in possession dancing around opponents as they darted at him from very which way - it's like McVeigh has eyes in the back of his strange looking head - was a pleasure to watch,
JPK toiled manfully all day, as he does every week; the heavily tattooed growler the Jones Boy [the GLW's favourite], L.Parker, the Cardiff Zucchini and the Hannebery Kiddie had the mid-field nailed down flat, only Callan Ward for the Pygs was any match for them.
Solid match fitness from a basically unchanged side for weeks now is probably what won it for the Swans in the denoument, with two evenly matched sides both basing their games on impenetrable defence, with only a couple of talls up front to kick goals.
Things were tense at half time, with everything to play for.
The Swans were in a position that seemed insanely impossible even a few weeks ago, having the chance to vault up a log-jammed ladder with their sixth win on the trot, to go 9-7, after starting the season with an inexplicably awful 0-6 before they even troubled the keeper of the Premiership points.
The Stats Guru, as you can imagine is beside himself; he almost wet his pants...Sydney were looking for their ninth win in ten matches.
The Pygs, in stark contrast, couldn't win a rigged raffle, having in the previous weeks been the first team to suffer two consecutive draws since 1921.
That inability to win was messing with the Giants heads, for mine, well, at least hoping it had.
So, at the long break, found myself chugging on a ciggie to relieve the nervous tension while wandering around the expansive Smoking Lounge at the Scoreboard End which was thick with the acrid smell of tobacco smoke mingled with the sweet pungent aroma of Cannabis Sativa, when two blokes approached me unannounced.
The first tapped me on the shoulder and said "hey mate, I love your scarf!"
"yeah, it's a good one, isn't it?"
[quizzically] "yes, but it's a St. George scarf!?" [obviously he had noted the 'retro' red-and-white 'hoop' design of the rugby league team of the same name].
"I know; but my wife stole it".
Which was true.
LOL, and then he wandered off.
Next, a young bloke with long matted half undone dread-locked hair and wild and crazed eyes came up to me and pushed me on the buttons on my jacket [there were two Adam Goodes, and one Barry Hall button among them, along with other various pin-on memorabilia - fully merched up] for no reason at all.
Taken aback, he pushed me just enough to almost put me off balance and dead-set, was fearing that he was about to kill me; but no, he thrust his face close to mine, smelt the marijuana on my breath, and with a huge idiot grin on his dial just barked "Go Swannies!"
As the GLW was quick to point it, he was obviously on drugs.
Why do these people pick me?
The Champo was one of the best quarters of footy seen at the ground in many a year, as the match ebbed and flowed, trading goal for goal, with patches of fully-fighting defensive work.
It wasn't until L.Franklin kicked an impossible set shot from the boundary line 70m out that sailed high wide and handsome through the big ones that Swans fans began to relax a little, and then to cap off the quarter, Tom "Pearl" Papley took a terrific mark just inside centre, physically broke free through a ring of defenders and took off...had three bounces as a raced towards goal before reaching the goal square and dribbling it through without a hand being laid on him.
Worth the price of admission alone.
Always had a lot of time for Paps; he's grown up so much since first seeing him in the flesh the last time a year ago, and he could be anything - if only he would shut up.
A serial pest; the Pearl just cannot stop yabbering and needlessly getting himself into stinks by calling opposition players names.
Needs help with niggle management.
Of the assembled masses in a ground where they were hanging from the rafters, about 80% were Swans fans travelling to an away game, that used to be called "the Battle of the Bridge", but now had a much more politically correct and boring title "Derby XIII".
And you hear some odd things come out of football crowds.
During a crucial moment in the third quarter as the mob were hushed for a moment in anticipation, a shrill female voice pierced the night sky with "I love Mellican!"
He had a good game...but...
Lewis Mellican?
With that face?
Surely it must have been his mother.
The standard of umpiring was appalling, as usual.
At several junctures, the Bamfords, of which there are far too many, appeared to have lost control of the game with all of them standing around blowing their whistles and pointing at each other as the players continued on their merry way, taking no notice of them at all.
You had to be there; another one of the many moments that are not captured by the television camera's.
In the last quarter the Umps were completely out of their minds when they gave Franklin a dubious free kick right in front of goal for Buddy just being Buddy in a marking contest, and then minutes later gave another free kick for only-God-knows-what to former Swans player Shane "Mummy" Mumford, again right in front of goal, right in front of us.
As he lined up the big sticks, the booing from the rowdy seats was the loudest that'd passed my ears in a while, and have to confess to joining in with gusto.
Shane's a nice bloke and a very good ruckman, but not at that moment.
[Mummy was excellent against his old team - which he left only because the Swans got involved in a frightful debacle and paid a huge amount of ridiculous money to get Tipsy, who's now fallen right out of favour and can't even get game. He smashed Naismith in the ruck, and Sydney still won - go figure?]
And towards the end of the match, when the Giants were finally pinged by the Bamfords for holding-the-man in the Swans backline, an ordinary looking bloke stood up in the bank of seats across from from us, pointed accusingly at the Umpire, and shouted very precisely in a stentorian disgusted English-accented voice "they have been doing it all day, Sir. All day!", and then promptly sat down.
It was probably the only thing this bloke yelled out all night.
Chose his moment.
Well said.
When the Fat Lady starting to sing a few minutes before full time with the Syds two goals up and the Pygs fast running out of time in a quarter that went for over 34 minutes, could not resist joining in with a rousing rendition of the old soccer hooligan ditty "Wots it like!? Wots it like!? Wots it like to lose at home?! Wot's it lie-eyek to-oo lose at home?"
Haven't been able to do that for years.
No-one hit me.
GWS probably lost the minor Premiership right there, while the Swans lived to fight another day.
Sunday morning Smoko down by the Magic Waters would have been a relaxed affair for the first time in months.
As former Super Coach Sheens, in the rugby league caper, was fond of saying "we'll take our wins, and learn from our losses."
For now, victory is sweet.
The Green and Golden Bell frogs were being very noisy in the Brickpit as we wandered off into the night.
Cheer, cheer.
GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY: 2.4, 5.6, 8.8, 12.11 (83). Goals: Greene 2, Patton 2, Kelly 2, Johnson 2, Mumford 2, Scully, Smith.
SYDNEY: 4.4, 7.5, 10.9, 14.12 (96). Goals: Franklin 4, Papley 2, Lloyd, Smith, Kennedy, Robinson, Parker, K.Jack, Hannebery, Jones.
At Sydney Showground.
Crowd: 21,924. [Ground record].
