Grand Final Fever

Penrith Mall, 1990

Anyone who knows me would know full well that my interest in rugby league is beyond minimal. The same could be said for most sport, actually. I enjoyed playing sport in primary school but it became too competitive after that and my lack of talent meant that I was no one's asset on any team. 

It was okay. I had other interests. Really.

Having lived in Penrith my entire life, however, and even with a distinct lack of time spent watching the Penrith Panthers play, I still cannot escape having some sort of personal connection to footy. 

I'll just say it - I love watching Penrith transform itself in response to Grand Final fever. 

I don't watch the game. I never watch the game. Not even the six Grand Finals featuring the Panthers that have taken place during my lifetime. 

But boy, when that fever descends on Penrith, it's hard to resist. 

I might not enjoy the sport itself but the passion it instills in my home town is something to behold.

1990 and 1991 saw back-to-back Grand Finals featuring both the Panthers and the Canberra Raiders. In that first year, I was in Year 5 and everyone at school was permitted to wear a jersey to school the day before the big game. This was the last year of the brown-and-white uniform, when the team were locally dubbed the Chocolate Soldiers, and the school became awash in these colours. Being ten years old I desperately needed to fit in so I got a jersey to wear to school. 

A few brave souls showed up that day in the green-and-white of the Raiders. They were mercilessly (and justifiably) harassed. How could anyone dare to wear those colours in the sun-soaked paradise of Penrith? This was Penrith's first time in the Grand Final after playing in first grade League for nearly 30 years. It was our combined love as town citizens that would help power the team to a victory. Anyone who didn't join us in cheering them on was clearly someone who didn't love their hometown!  

Alas, it wasn't to be. Come Monday, those few Raiders fans, those emerald outliers, those Territorian traitors, they came into school swelling with youthful pride and the rosy-cheeked arrogance of the triumphant contrarian. There is little fury like the anger of the defeated Penrith resident. We knew, we absolutely positively knew, that the Panthers had lost because of these few turncoats who had refused to support their local team.

I never watched the game. But at least I wasn't a filthy Canberra supporter. 

The following year saw the embattled and hardened Panthers win that rightful victory over the Raiders in the rematch of all rematches. I was once again swept up in a sea of jerseys as Penrith swapped their traditional brown-and-white for the new colours of black, red, yellow, and green. It was Year 6 and this was our year - we came of age alongside the Panthers as they transitioned from being runner-up Chocolate Soldiers to first-place Liquorice Allsorts. 

I collected Panthers football cards that year. Had the whole set. Even went and watched a game at Panthers stadium and was bored out of my brain. Didn't watch the Grand Final. 

Took great pleasure in hearing that Canberra lost though.

It was a long time before I had to think about footy that intently again. My brother was and remains a diehard Panthers fan, so I heard about victories and losses through him, but watch a game? I did not. 

Once, in 1999, I was training to be a sound recordist for the Sydney Olympics. I was given a 'shotgun' microphone, the sort that can record sound from far away, and I was sent to record the sound for a televised game between the Balmain Tigers and the North Sydney Bears. I had to run alongside the field, headphones on, holding this long mic above my head to get every body-connecting tackle, swear, grunt, and referee call. The only thing I really remember from this game is the instructions the gruff audio director gave me, how relatively easy it was to keep pace with the players from the sidelines as they were often stopped by their opposites, and the dressing-down I got at the end for coiling the mic lead around my arm. I guess you could say I sort of watched that game. 

In the era of the early '00s I was living in an old house in Penrith CBD and such was my vicinity to Panthers Stadium that, any time there was a game on, I could hear the ref whistle echoing across the night and the roar of the fans whenever the Panthers got a try. In 2003, when the Panthers once more clawed their way into a Grand Final, I found that my house was in the epicentre of the metaphorical earthquake that would follow.

In the eye of the victory-tornado that descended on Penrith after the 2003 Grand Final win, I watched as a pyramid of empty shopping trolleys were deposited on my lawn. I watched as the streets locked up bumper-to-bumper, hundreds of vehicles flying Panthers flags, horns blaring and mullets proudly swaying outside car windows in the winds of conquest. I saw the immaculately coiffeured flowerbed on the roundabout of Castlereagh Road, which had previously spelt out 'Penrith' in honour of the 2000 Olympics Rowing Event, now changed to 'Penruff' in honour of our Rugby League victory.

Again, I never watched this game, but I revelled in that atmosphere. I bristled at the craziness of it, marvelled at how a whole town could feel so united, so invigorated.

I saw it all again two years ago when people started dressing their bins up in the colours of the team. Saw the massive Nathan Cleary heads on lawns like some sort of cargo-cult impression of the Easter Island stone figures. Saw more cars streaming Panthers flags around our streets like a cavalcade for some president or king. Saw it in the 48 hour party that trashed one fan's house over the road. 

Saw it today in the black, red, yellow, and green duct tape that someone had decorated their ute with. And in the re-emergence of the giant cardboard heads of players displayed outside a local cafe. 

Will the Panthers win a third successive Grand Final victory this year? Their fifth premiership in total? 

I won't watch the game but I'll be happy to hear the roar.