Ever since the Coronavirus unleashed its plan to colonize our bodies with weapons-grade cooties, the world had been denied the joys of attending live sporting events. Contrarianism, a lack of respect for expertise, and an absence of basic empathy have concocted a heady brew that continues to make attending sports impossible in America. Well, except for these fucking legends.

But that’s not true for the rest of the world. Here in Australia the AFL season resumed in June, and has soldiered on, albeit without games in Victoria or New South Wales due to virus outbreaks. Starting with 2,000 fans at Adelaide Oval for the Adelaide vs. Port Adelaide match in Round 2, fan capacity has steadily grown as social distancing requirements start to relax.

Luckily for me, Mrs. WEW works for a major sponsor of both Adelaide teams, and we were fortunate enough to join 14,000 of our closest friends to watch the Port Adelaide Power take on the Western Bulldogs this past Monday night. Not only that, but we were privileged to join a considerably smaller number of friends in one of those fancy suites with the free food and drinks!

The view from the suite was pretty…sweet.

The stands looked half full, and the fans made it sound as completely full as my stomach (YOU try to resist arancini and little Vietnamese meatballs!) Early on, that noise was mostly in the form of boos. The Power (on only three days’ rest) started sluggishly and were also on the wrong side of some very questionable calls. They were fortunate to enter the quarter break trailing the Dogs 17-8.

The second quarter was much of the same. Neither team played well, but the Power just didn’t look like themselves, their fast-break offensive game stymied by sloppy ball-handling and a lack of energy. A few individually brilliant plays that led to goals kept them in the game, and halftime saw the Bulldogs with a 23-20 lead. Halftime also saw me house two cupcakes and a thing of pudding from the dessert spread.

Maybe the Power were treated to cupcakes at halftime as well, because they stormed out in the third quarter looking like the best version of themselves, winning the quarter 27-1 and setting up a relatively stress-free final term.

Goal! The view from this angle is great, as you get the cathedral in the background and the old cricket scoreboard that has been used since 1911.

The vibe of the crowd was interesting, in that apart from the empty seats, it felt entirely like the other games I’ve been to. I should preface this by saying that South Australia is one of the luckiest places to be in the world right now as far as COVID goes, and mask wearing in public is rare, but no one seemed overly concerned. I didn’t see a single mask in the crowd, and there wasn’t any social distancing in the concourses.

That said, I’ll close with a funny anecdote that reminds me there are always going to be heroic pedants in the world that will try to do the right thing even when it feels foolish and pointless. We’d left the vomitorium to sit in the stands, and there were probably 12 people total sitting in our section. This did not deter a stadium usher from asking my wife and I to put an empty seat between us like we were at the high school dance and we had to leave room for the Holy Spirit. “You do know,” I wish I had said, “that when we get home we’re gonna do it?”