If you want to get to know a city, head to the local stadium

The best way to get under the skin of any community when you’re travelling is to go to a local sporting match, just be mindful of what you’re wearing. 

I have an important safety message for all travellers. Not going to lie – you might consider it slightly fringe – but it could actually prevent you, or a child of yours, from being killed.

Do not, under any circumstances, wear a green puffer jacket to a Rangers versus Celtic Old Firm match in Glasgow, if it is a Rangers home game. Who knew? Well, you do now.

A little context? Sure. 

You see, put simply, Rangers are blue and Celtic are green and you don’t wear a skerrick of green if it’s a blue home game, which it was in January last year when my son George and I made our way to Ibrox for what is routinely voted the world’s greatest (and often most violent) sporting rivalry.

I’m not sure whether the phrase “lived up to all expectations” quite covers the gravity of my son having a baseball bat-wielding Rangers fan threaten him with a clubbing, but, gosh, it makes for a fun family story given we all survived – just.

And the funny thing is we are nominally Rangers fans, although that almost changed in a couple of swings and a miss.

Rangers vs Celtic is routinely voted the world’s greatest sporting rivalry. Picture: Richard Callis (Getty Images).

Despite our Scottish misdeeds, my resolve has not wavered that the greatest way to get under the skin of any community in the world is to head to one of their local sporting matches. Could be school, college, the top league or the local pub comp. Sport brings communities together with almost all social strata removed. Of course, it also splits communities in two (rarely three) so do your colour homework and stick to neutral colours unless you really want to find out how passionate sports fans can be.

As my family will excitedly tell you, while other families might travel in search of museums, galleries, scenery or historical monuments, I’ll most often be in search of local sport. Because watching the local team in whatever sport tickles your fancy (let’s be honest – in most parts of the world it is football) is one of the best ways to immerse yourself in a town’s culture while also having an enormous amount of fun trying to figure out what the supporters’ chants might really mean.

This European summer is a huge one for sport – the Euros in Germany led us straight into the Olympics. But events like these are so essentially global and so damned expensive, they’re often hard for us mere mortals to get near.

So my counsel is to look for the Tier Two matches wherever you travel. The vibe is often more alive, the passion is real, the corporates haven’t taken it over and the ticket prices remain in the realm of the common man.

A match I saw between the universities of Alabama and Clemson a few years back was the best American football experience of my life. Picture: Supplied.

Getting to a local sports event often requires not a lot more than a bit of diligent research before your travels and maybe some massaging of dates and travel time. If you’re heading to the UK, you really, truly should try to go to a football game. But it unequivocally does not have to be a Premier League match at Arsenal or Tottenham. Sure, if you’re a fan of theirs it’s a lifetime experience, but tickets are incredibly hard to source and often ridiculously expensive.

Instead, if you’re in London, maybe head to Brentford or West Ham for a Premier League game or one of the teams in the championship or lower divisions. If you’ve been watching Ryan Reynolds’ brilliant Welcome to Wrexham doco series you will know that a Tier Three team playing in the Welsh countryside can create just as magnificent an atmosphere as the most fêted football clubs in the land.

The same goes for the good old US of A. Unlike the vast majority of Australians, I absolutely love American football and have been to a couple of Super Bowls (boom, there goes a decent humble brag), but over the years when I’ve chatted to American football fans they all told me I absolutely hadto go to a college game. And they were right. A match I saw between the universities of Alabama and Clemson a few years back was the best American football experience of my life.

And the USA also throws up a surprisingly great soccer experience. A few years back I was in Portland, Oregon, for a weekend and found myself at a Portland Timbers match in the MLS (major league soccer) and it was brilliant. Great vibe, wonderful colour – the whole nine yards. Many of America’s smaller cities don’t have an NFL or NBA team so often their soccer or even baseball experience is absolutely brilliant

If I want to show a visitor what a weekend in Sydney means, it is always straight to a Swans game at the SCG. Picture: Brett Costello.

And then there are dreams to see a match, any match, in Madrid, Rio de Janeiro or even Fiji, where I’m told the local rugby matches are an absolute brutal joy to behold.

Far be it from me to discount the cultural relevance and objective beauty of music, dance and theatre, but for raw emotion, unpredictability, joy and occasional heartbreak, there’s nothing more real than an afternoon or evening revelling in the joys of sport.

If I want to show a visitor what a weekend in Sydney means, it is always straight to a Swans game at the SCG. Which leaves only one possible sign off. Carn the Bloods.

Originally published as If you want to get to know a city, head to the local stadium