Sport’s answer to empty nest syndrome

It’s not quite the PM having a holiday in Hawaii while Australia burns, but Melbourne’s sporting teams are thriving while the city suffers.

A man walks across Princes Bridge with the empty MCG in background during Melbourne’s lockdown. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Poor Melbourne. The MCG an empty nest. Live sport a memory. Its favourite sons and daughters prospering in foreign fields. Only the sad, vicarious perversion of the cuckold to cheer itself up.

Everybody else is having the fun due the citizens of the cobblestoned alleys decorated with graffiti and thick with coffee.

The Storm, their adopted league team, will play the grand final next weekend in Sydney. It probably would have been that way anyway, still it would be nice to be able to hop on the overnight train or drive past the dog on the tucker box and squeeze in to watch. Or just know you could.

Catch Fox Footy’s Grand Final Week coverage on Kayo. Stream all the latest news and insight right up until first bounce plus half-time and full-time analysis from the Fox Footy commentary team. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >

And wouldn’t it have been nice to watch the Melbourne Vixens win that fantastic final on Sunday?

Australia’s most sports-obsessed city has a public holiday due this Friday for an AFL grand final that, like those other contests, will be held in someone else’s bedroom. They’ve renamed the event Thank You Day but it will be gratitude expressed with conflicting emotions if at all.

Thanks for, ummm, having fun while Melburnians have none.

Send us a post card from Hawaii and we’ll pin it to a charred wall if it ever gets here.

You’ve probably never heard that Tom T Hall song called Spokane Motel Blues but in it, Tom reflects on what everyone else is up to while he is “stuck in Spokane writing songs”.

The singer knows “those dogs are running down in Memphis and them nags are running in LA”, he also suspects his mates are having more fun “Willie Nelson’s picking out in Austin, and Waylon’s hanging out in Mexico … and Kris is making movin’ picture shows”.

Tradition demands the AFL grand final be played at the MCG, but pandemics have no regard for tradition and the grand stadium is an empty nest you may visit the precincts of should you wish to behold the absence, but only if you live within 25km and only in a group of 10 made up from your household and one other.

It must be of some comfort to those who live under Melbourne’s heavy skies that the Tigers – fighting off challengers from Adelaide and Brisbane – have made it to the last game of the season.

As far as outsiders go the Geelong team are pretty much part of the exclusive family.

It is of some irony that in the years when the game should have been played interstate, not least during the grand finals of 2005 and 2006 when the Sydney Swans and West Coast Eagles teams, officials and fans were forced to migrate to Melbourne to watch a game few in the town had any skin in.

The interstate clubs know the disadvantage of being dislocated for the final match of the year and the way it can benefit Victorian teams, but nobody is happy to see Victorians deprived of their biggest day in these circumstances.

At the turn of the century Brisbane were forced to fly to Melbourne – once, famously, at low altitude to ease the physical toll on its ageing playing group – four years in a row for the big day.

It would have been nice for the Lions to play one at home, good for the local game and great for Brisbane, but Gary Ablett and co had other ideas.

The champion has tasted success on the biggest stage and now seems likely to bow out of the game after competing in the first ever grand final outside of Melbourne (in 1991 Hawthorn beat the Eagles in a grand final held at Waverley Park because the MCG was in the middle of reconstruction).

Fans look for omens at this time of year and fans of both teams may find something in the fact that Richmond’s first ever grand final appearance took place at the end of a 1919 season which had, according to club historian Rhett Bartlett, seen them often undermanned because players were suffering from the Spanish flu.

Victorians, however, were allowed to attend the match during those pandemic years. In 1918 40,000 watched South Melbourne beat Collingwood and 45,000 were on hand the following year when the Pies beat the Tigers.

It is one thing to lose the jewel from your sporting crown, but another to be denied the chance to enjoy it as it must be enjoyed.

Truth is the big day is so stacked with well-heeled schmoozers most Melburnians have a tradition of watching it with friends, family or fellow supporters at home or a pub or some such.

Unfortunately that’s basically not on this year.

Your household and only the members of your household, Dan Andrews has decreed. No friends over, no barbecues, no wheeling the television out onto the deck, no traditional gatherings.

This is a cruel twist.

“The grand final is very different this year, very different for obvious reasons, and while I know that many people would normally spend time with family and friends to celebrate that day, whether their team is in the grand final or not, it is a big part of who we are,” Andrews said on Sunday.

“As important as it is, in a cultural sense, in a very passionate way, for every single football fan across our state, it is not worth risking all that we have done, all that we have built, all that we can do in just a few days’ time by having gatherings that are unsafe.”

Hang in there Melbourne and take comfort from the fact that not even a pandemic or dislocation can stop your sporting sides achieve when it matters.