But if Fairfax Media had to toe the line and stay with the cricket, there was another act of personal civil disobedience that would have to do. The cricket was at the Sydney Cricket Ground: Sydney's big ground where cricket is played. Easy to understand. Right next to it is a big ground where football is played, and Fairfax Media refuses to call the sister ground anything other than the footy stadium.

Or SFS in a nod to modernity. Or Sydney Sports Ground when Fairfax Media is feeling ornery. Whatever used-car dealer or major bank's insurance division has the naming rights to it now, it was not called Whatsie Fluffers Field when Chicka stepped, stepped again, and stepped a third defender to tie the 1989 grand final. It was not called Punters' Park when Coyne scored that try in the 1994 Origin. It was the SFS, and in Fairfax Media's heart it remains sacred ground. It's the Sydney Sports Ground, where Laurie Monaghan kicked that field goal from the sideline to sink mighty Wales.

When names disappear, so does the past. If the past is not another country and not even the past, then nor are the true names of football grounds. It is not just history that is flogged off when a sponsor buys naming rights to a ground; it is the present, too, because in sport, where so many of us live in the past, there is no difference.

More and more, that humble fan is the custodian of that past-in-the-present, because every other interest is ganging up against us. T.G. Millner Field, site of the immortal "Up The Jumper" try by NSW Country in 1975 amongst a zillion blood-soaked Saturday afternoons, is being sold off. It's bad enough when the actual territory passes into the hands of property developers, but the so-called compromise of flogging naming rights sales is little better.

For round one of this year's NRL competition, Parramatta will be visiting Manly at a place that sounds like a cross between a theme park, a bingo hall and a 1920s Los Angeles land speculation. For the rest of us, it's Brookvale Oval, aka Brookie. The jokes that will stem from Brookie's new name, which Fairfax Media refuses to utter, are predictable. Like Brookie's most recent nickname – "The Fortress", in direct contradiction of the Sea Eagles' porous recent record there – the new name is not a masterpiece of irony (for which rugby league is little known), but an act of soulless expediency (with which rugby league is synonymous).