I’m at a Crows AFL game on a Saturday afternoon and it’s getting to me again. No, not the prospect of another lost game – although you never quite know with the Crows. It’s not the heat – we’re in the bleachers and the sun is baking down. It’s the noise. From the moment you approach the ground until you leave you are bombarded with live music, excessively loud piped music, loud-speaker announcements and on-screen videos of marauding crows. In every break in the game – quarter time, half-time and three-quarter time – and every time a goal is scored, it’s the same.
The crowd noise when the game is on and the club songs played as the teams run onto the oval are fine – and even the victor’s club song played at the end of the match is fine – well at least it’s just bearable if it’s the opposition’s song – but all the rest is so unnecessary.
You can’t hear yourself think and conversation with those you came with is nigh on impossible. Heaven only knows how the players hear one another or the umpire. In fact, quite often they don’t. Then there is the visual noise of those neon ads flashing all around the oval’s boundary fence for the entire game.
Oh, how I long for the days when I could enjoy my half-time cuppa from a flask of tea and chat with my mates in peace and quiet. Has someone decided we can’t bear a single moment of silence, that we have to be entertained every moment?
I’m seriously considering tossing in my membership next year and becoming an armchair supporter – at least I can control the volume on the television.
At times today I’ve been just so tempted to clamber over the boundary fence, run to the middle of the oval and shout, ‘Be quiet’. But no one would hear me, would they? Perhaps if I stripped all my clothes off as well…?
Burnside Writers Group 