The eerie scenes at Adelaide Oval greeted the Crows in Rory Sloane’s 200th game, rather than 50,000 screaming supporters
On a perfect day for football in Adelaide, there should’ve been 50,000 screaming supporters barracking for their captain’s 200th game and their coach’s first game. However, it was not to be.
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It should have been a celebration.
On a perfect day for football in a footy-mad city with a new coach, new kids, new hope and their captain’s 200th game to get excited for, Adelaide instead opened its AFL season against Sydney in an eerie silence.
The mood inside and outside Adelaide Oval which is usually pumping with noise and people and smells reflected the feeling in the community as it grapples with an out-of-control coronavirus pandemic – surreal.
Is this really happening? Are they really playing a game of football with no fans?
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Just three weeks ago 50,000 people packed into the Adelaide Oval to see Queen perform and they would have got close to that under normal circumstances to see the Crows play Sydney yesterday.
Instead the footbridge that usually flows like the river it crosses with colour and buzz was empty and the fluoro sign above the southern plaza entrance simple said ‘venue closed to the public’.
Perhaps the hardest question to fathom right now is, for how long?
Inside the ground music blared over the PA system as the players made their way onto the ground for their warm-up just before 4pm and the central umpire still held the ball aloft for the sound of the siren as they entered the arena.
The Crows did their best to make it still feel like home. They painted the race where their players ran out with pictures of fans and covered bay of seats behind the goals at the southern end with guernseys.
There was no banner for captain Rory Sloane as he ran onto the ground for this 200th game but his wife Belinda and family were watching from an open air box in the Riverbank Stand. There was no handshake between Sloane and his opposing skipper Dane Rampe at the coin toss but it was a meaningless gesture anyway because moments later they were lying on one another on the ground anyway.
Goal celebrations were at varied. The high-fives were replaced by fist pumps and high-forearms, Taylor Walker and Rory Atkins mimicked a hand sanitiser pump pack, and Sydney’s Tom Papley pretended to high-five the front row of seats in the pocket.
Sloane’s goal celebration in the second quarter had extra special meaning when he kissed the lion tattoo on his forearm and looked to the sky in a nod to his first son Leo who he lost at birth in 2018.
The usual roar of the crowd and cries of “ball” were replaced by deep, hollow thuds of boot on the leather footy and the players’ voices echoed through the stadium.
The Crows fell behind Sydney in the second quarter and looked gone for most of the second half before a late fightback saw them lose by just three points.
Still, Walker and Tom Lynch chaired Sloane from the ground on their shoulders to a joint guard of honour with the Swans who clapped him off. But sadly, the rest of the clapping was in people’s loungerooms where it could not be heard.