Leichhardt Oval is old. Well, Modern Australia old, anyway. It’s not a castle or church or ruin from medieval times like they have in Europe, say, and China. Rather it’s a rectangular sports field that’s hosted rugby league since 1934 and changed only slowly since. And depending who you ask, it’s either a great little joint to watch footy or an embarrassment to modern rugby league.



Leichhardt – and it’s usually just “Leichhardt”, rarely “Leichhardt Oval”, never shortened to “Likey” in the Australian way – has been described as antiquated, quaint, dilapidated, precious, full of ghosts, the suburban soul of rugby league and Leichhardt. It’s surrounded by the red rooftops of suburban Lilyfield and by mighty Moreton Bay Figs that surround baby grandstands named after ancient league men. Walk through narrow old streets to the ground and people sell sausages on white bread from knock-up backyard barbecues.

The ground is home (one of them, anyway) to the Wests Tigers rugby league club. Previously it was home to Balmain Tigers who in 2000 formed a still-uneasy merger with Western Suburbs Magpies. The demon spawn became Wests Tigers presumably because Balmain Magpies would have further narrowed the supporter base, and they didn’t want to start afresh and call them Wests Goats, or Piranhas, or Kevins.

Yet walk among the crowd of 16,000 here on this rain-soaked Sunday and the jumpers confirm Balmain to be ascendant. There’s the odd black-and-white Magpies guernsey, sticking out like a placard at a protest against a protest. Otherwise Leichhardt is Balmain Tigers, orange and black. As in most modern families, there are dominant siblings. Illawarra Steelers would tell you that, and Northern Sydney Bears.

But we’ll leave geopolitical ructions for another time and head instead to the back of the Leichhardt hill for the match between Tigers and visiting Manly Warringah Sea Eagles. Should be a fair old hit-out. The locals have shown some exciting form in patches and sport some brilliant colts. The visitors are comp heavyweights, grand finalists four of the last seven seasons. And if it wasn’t absolutely hosing down with rain we’d probably see some good footy. (We still do.)

It's not ideal weather for cheerleading as the rain comes down. Photograph: Renee McKay/Getty Images Photograph: Renee McKay/Getty Images

Hosing? Great thick sheets of white water strafe the ground like angry mist from Niagara ground zero. And this is where I’ve chosen to take my wife on a date. Dressed in a poncho and low-slung baseball hat, she spends most of the game just about guffawing at her partner’s choice of romantic way to escape our three small children. Perhaps she’s gone mad, but she doesn’t stop smiling. For there’s a lot to like.

The beer is cold and comes in cans and costs six bucks. The hot dogs are long and boiled in water and placed on a white roll. From there you have a choice of tomato sauce and/or mustard shot out a giant plunger. Meat pies come from little multi-tray ovens and not from microwaves, which are to pies as they are to pussy-cats. Perhaps not that bad. But bad, man. Bad.

Bad things probably happened to Friedrich Wilhelm “Ludwig” Leichhardt, a Prussian explorer and naturalist famous for exploring northern and central Australia and never coming back from one adventure; it says so on Google. And as his bones bleach in the sun somewhere in the Darling Downs of south-east Queensland, you wonder why the great Explorer of the North would have a suburb named after him in Sydney’s inner west.

But you don’t wonder for long because the Tigers are in! You beauty! And then they’re in again! And again! AND AGAIN! And though we don’t follow either team and haven’t seen a game together since Love’s Early Days when I was picked up drunk from golf and taken to see the Dragons at Kogarah-Jubilee, we leap and cheer and celebrate with our fellow man, hoo-ha, it’s good to be a fan.

A streaker tries his luck for the Tigers. Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

And then it really starts to rain. Great thick thumping white sheets of water fairly strafe the place, and the hilarity of the hill folk goes up in kind. For there’s a commonality about the experience, a shared human … thing, you know what I mean. Everyone’s out here amongst it and it’s probably quite a silly thing to do, if you took a minute to think about it. But the heavier the rain gets the more people laugh about it. It helps that the Tigers are up 26-0.

And so we watch the game and drink our tinnies and banter with our fellow soaked footy fans. Up here back of the hill on this eastern side we can’t see the scoreboard or big screen or even the game when the umbrellas go up. The scoreboard is the size of your grandad’s brick shed and like the big screen faces the main stand. And if rain wasn’t streaming down as if from a massive bladder in space, we’d have to shield our eyes from the setting sun. Yet it’s bloody great fun.

Some funny young Poms in front try on Aussie accents with varying degrees of success. Some nice gents behind us share their umbrella and we talk of rugby league and … that’s all, rugby league. When the Tigers score – as they do often – the hill mob roar and hug and high-five, and punch the air. It’s not aggressive, it’s more in acclamation. Yessss. And many of these fine jocular groups of people feature Tigers and Manly fans, standing together, shouting beers, and putting shit on each other in the time-honoured away.

Yes, the joint has its faults. There are very few seats, restricted corporate facilities (though they sold out last Sunday) and at various vantage points you can’t see the scoreboard, big screen or even the game. But every ground has its faults. The Soviet-sized mega-stadiums only rock when they’re full. Campbelltown Stadium – where the joint venture plays to its Western Suburbs base – has dud lights, disaffected locals, and the atmosphere of a sports event in space. The Tigers other home, ANZ Stadium, is a fine venue but poorly served by transport and unappealing at night when your team’s a dud.

But these Tigers aren’t duds and end up whipping Manly 34-18. To celebrate a streaker tears across the ground in his underpants. And then people begin to slide down the hill. Men, women, children – mostly men, it must be said – take a run-up and hurl themselves down the slope, skidding along the wet grass and mud, and finishing at the bottom muddy and wet and laughing their very heads off.

Would you want to stand in the rain every week? No. Would you head to Leichhardt to watch Tigers play Titans on a cold Saturday night in July? The hardcore would. But no. Yet standing (and it’s a thing advocates for all-seat stadia never get, standing up watching sport is social and good) among clumps of your friends and family – and even your wife on a half-deranged date – drinking tinnies and roaring on the home side, rain strafing the ground like cold white darts, it is recreational Sunday arvo gold. And it will never get old.