In the flat spots, the Dragon Army kept the vibe of the show rolling by singing, chanting, yelling and flag-waving.Īn eclectic group they were, and in their midst I caught sight of a slightly built, middle aged man with glasses like portholes in a destroyer and an egg-bald head. The noise when this happened was less of a roar and more of a massive sucking in of breath – imagine 18,000 vacuum cleaners turned on at once. Jamie Soward, Brett Morris and Ben Creagh all kept the scoreboard ticking over, and the semi-trailers rushing through, but the experience was reversed momentarily when Michael Weyman planted Wade McKinnon in the ground head-first like a new season daisy. The union crowds could learn something from this sort of tribal support. Less of a sound, and more of a physical sensation. The noise when this happened was a bit like standing on the side of the road as a semi-trailer goes past and the air buffer hits you in the face. It didn’t take long for the Dragons to assert their dominance, as Darius Boyd sliced through a poor tackle from Tigers star Benji Marshall to set up an 8-0 lead. The Dragons as premiership frontrunners up against the Tigers on a four game winning streak – irresistible force meets immovable object – although as it turned out, the Tigers were a lot more movable than anyone thought. That was the cue for the only outright venom of the night, when the crowd close by growled at him like dogs in a junkyard and the silence was restored. There was a minute of silence before kick-off, remembering the diggers killed in Afghanistan, but it was punctuated by some muppet yelling out “You’re a legend Ben Creagh!”. All I knew was that it looked like it was going to be pretty good fun, so I grabbed a beer and a hot dog, and strapped myself in on the hill around the 30 metre line. Far from it, in fact, the crowd was far too focused on the job at hand to worry about any non-Dragons in their midst.īut it wouldn’t have surprised me one bit if someone had turned to me, in the same way that the high priest might turn to a virgin at a sacrifice, and asked “Are you sure this is the best place for you?”. “Maybe I should have brought my passport and checked with Kogarah Council on the way in?”. “Do they allow mere spectators?” I thought. These people take this game so seriously that when you walk into the stadium, you can feel the difference, and you start to question whether you’re really committed enough to the cause to be here. It’s more like a vocation or a higher calling. It’s not amusement, it’s commitment and it’s certainly not leisure. This isn’t entertainment, it’s a mission. That’s not the way it is down south at Kogarah when the Dragons are on at home. It’s frothy, light and nobody’s hanging themselves if we lose.
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When you go to watch the Wallabies or the Waratahs play, the crowd has a polite, party sort of vibe. Not only are they dressed in the V, but they all have the same look on their faces. If I’m making it sound like a disease, then that’s probably not too far off the mark.ĭown Kogarah way, the V has clearly spread from house to house, leaving no stone unturned, until the authorities have given up and let it run unchecked through the population.Ĭlearly all the babies born across the road at St George Hospital are infected at birth, and to warn all the unbelievers, the nurses simply dress them in the ubiquitous white jersey with a scarlet V down the front – and they stay that way for life. Of course, it goes without saying that every man between the ages of 12 and 60 had the V.
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Kids had the V, mums had the V, and young girls had the V. The first is that famous symbol of the St George club – the Big Red V. No matter whether they were families dodging speeding vehicles, young men being dropped off by mates in fast cars, or hard workers celebrating the end of the week, they all shared two things. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the Princes Highway, and I noticed several families cheating death and hauling their beanie-clad offspring parallel to the ground through the Cannonball Run of peak hour Princes Hwy traffic. Luckily I managed to grab a cab from the station but had to jump out close to the ground because English Street and Jubilee Avenue are both closed off to allow thousands of pedestrians to make their way to the gates. The evening was fine and warm for June, and the train ride was typically Sydney – workers, office girls and students all heading home, whilst the party set were illuminated on the inbound platforms as the train flashed past.