With the Foo Fighters announcing they will be playing at Geelong’s GMHBA Stadium in the first full capacity concert in Australia since March 2020, the buzz around the one night only event is immense. 

Having seen the Foo Fighters at Marvel Stadium twice, I know the energy and excitement that is generated and I really get the sense that the whole of Victoria is excited. With a terrific frontman, backed by an incredible band, their ear bursting shows never get old. 

However exciting the announcement may be, this isn’t the main point of this piece. As an avid footy lover, the thing I am most excited about with the pandemic gradually coming to an end, is being back at the footy. No matter how stressed, frustrated or overjoyed it makes me, going to the footy is always an incredible experience. 

Whilst I have never been to a Grand Final at the world famous MCG, I know that there is nothing else in the sporting world that can even lace the boots of the last day in September in front of 100,000 people at the ground, and the millions of fans watching from home with a party size box of cheezles in hand.

Watching from home has become the norm over the last couple of years. When we came into 2020, the new decade, no one expected that this virus, which was perceived as nothing more than the flu, would have the impact that it has. And of course, after years of going to the G’ and watching the Cats fail in the prelim in person, we finally made it to the Grand Final, in the one year when we couldn’t go. My feeling going into that game was it was premiership or bust and unfortunately for us it was a bust. However I thought I would be more distraught than I actually was. The AFL experimented with a night grand final and being in Brisbane it just felt like any other Saturday night game. If I had actually been at the game or watching at a friend’s house whilst the game was on at the G’, I’m sure the feeling would have been different. 

Victoria is the footballing state. The grand final won’t be moving from the G’ before 2057, for which then the deal to have it played there every year will likely get extended to long after my time has come. The MCG has such a rich history which many Victorians cherish and with millions of Melburnians having spent the most days in the world in lockdown, people are craving to get back to their seats. 

In early 2021 when the vaccines first became available, Australia started learning how to live with Covid and I, along with a few lucky others in crowd capped events, even got to go to a few games before we were swept back into lockdown by yet another wave of new cases. This shattered many people as Melbourne lost the grand final again, this time to Perth. 

The Cats had another good year which ultimately ended in disappointment again in, you guessed it, the preliminary final. We got trounced by the eventual winners Melbourne although this time I’m glad I wasn’t there to watch it in person. 

Footy plays such a big part in the lives of Victorians and after the pain of missing out on the grand final for the last two years, we deserve to get back to normal, and the Foo Fighters announcing their one-off show has marked the beginning of the road back to normality for Melburnians.

Photography credit: Daniel Anthony