OPINION

THIS morning in Sydney, my day is likely to have begun like many millions of others who rose achingly out of their beds for another day at work.

A cursory glance at the Google Maps app on my ageing Samsung informs me my bus is even later than usual and I will be waiting in the drizzle, staring longingly down the road for it to arrive.

I smile at the driver as she pulls up and say “good morning” with every ounce of early-morning cheer I can muster, and she almost begrudgingly reciprocates.

I don’t blame her for a lack of enthusiasm. She looks tired, overworked and no doubt dreading another morning of navigating the city’s clogged roads filled with irate and recklessly impatient motorists.

Idling down Anzac Parade in the city’s southeast, the bleary-eyed commuters and I pass empty shopfronts where business owners — some who had been there for decades — have given up all hope and been forced out by a shambolic and seemingly endless light rail construction project.

When the fed-up driver drops me off at Surry Hills, I step off to see homeless people lying alone and motionless on dismantled cardboard boxes.

I pass “pubs” that look more like miniature casinos, filled with eerie, jangling pokie tunes and plasma screens showing CGI harness horse racing.

When I go for my coffee, there are blokes seated in the smoking area with schooners of cheap beer, darts hanging out of their mouths — reading the racing pages of the newspaper and making their way to the “VIP” gambling dens filled with mirrors, snacks and flashing lights.

It’s only 9am.

Then, I look at the front page of The Daily Telegraph and I see something remarkable.

A glistening artist’s impression of a sparkling new Allianz stadium jumps out of the page. It will cost taxpayers an eye-watering $729 million to build once the state government has knocked down the perfectly good stadium of the same name, which was built on the exact same spot in 1988.

Fans of rugby league, rugby union and football have been flocking here ever since, with millions of fans witnessing some of Australia’s most iconic sporting moments.

And, as tacky as it sounds, the 30-year-old venue is more than just a gathering place for sports fanatics and overpaid ball-kickers.

It holds a special place in my heart as a place that took me in when I was just a lowly backpacker, fleeing the bland food, bad weather and hopelessness of the north of England just after the global financial crisis struck.

Washing dishes, collecting beer money, learning the Aussie lingo and even meeting the girl who would become my fiancee after several making-out sessions in the supply cupboard — it all took place somewhere that holds so much history and memories for so many people.

Not once in those heady, formative days did I hear one person complain about the stadium or suggest it should be knocked down.

Close friends, some of whom have worked in the stadium nigh on seven years and spoken to hundreds of sports fans every single day said they never heard even one of them utter words that even vaguely condone what the state government is about to do — destroy it all in three months’ time.

So why are they doing this?

Revealing the artist’s impressions today, NSW Sports Minister Stuart Ayres declared to The Daily Telegraph that the new stadium — to be opened in 2022 — would “kick (Brisbane’s) Suncorp into ­reserve grade”. How old is he? 12?

So in other words, $729 million of our money is being spent on a proverbial d**k-measuring competition between two state governments, which just so happen to be in opposing political parties. They can show it off to their rich mates when they pop into to town, wink at them and have a bit of banter about how much better their stadium is than Brisbane’s. Megalolz, indeed.

Hilariously, “senior sources” within the NSW Government are claiming the soulless new design will offer the “most female friendly stadium in Australia”, in a pathetic attempt to justify the plans to the political left.

The bizarre justification for this claim is that the Allianz Stadium was unable to host a single NRL/NRLW double header because it did not have sufficient change rooms.

Brilliant. So instead of, I don’t know, slightly altering arrangements for that one event, why not just knock the whole thing down?

I’m sure Australian feminists will be chuffed at this progressive thinking — especially from a government that voted to ensure abortion remains illegal in the state just last year.

I know we’re in Australia and everyone is supposed to like sport. However, and this might surprise many in the political elite I’m sure, but not all of us do.

Given there is roughly 5.37 million people living in Sydney, every one of us is being asked to cough up tax dollars to help pay for something many of us have no interest in whatsoever.

Not only that, many of us who actually like sport don’t even bother to turn up to the most important events.

In last month’s NRL elimination semi-final between the Sharks and Panthers — two teams from Sydney no less — only 19,211 fans rocked up at Allianz Stadium, filling up less than half of the stadium’s 45,000 seat capacity, an abysmal attendance in a so-called sport-loving nation.

The same night, the AFL’s Demons and Hawks semi-final at the MCG in Melbourne drew a bumper crowd of 90,152.

Surely that’s more embarrassing to Sydney than having an “ageing” stadium, which is, in fact, only 30 years old. And, so much for trying to hang on to what little history we have.

I would much rather give my tax dollars to that fed-up bus driver who took me to work this morning, to the business owner who had to close their shop on Anzac Parade, to a gambling charity to wean desperate addicts off toxic pokies or to the homeless people I saw asleep in the rain.

Surely any one of them is more deserving of the cash than this disgusting, pointless vanity project.