Geelong supporter and student Lewis Mullholland returned to Simonds Stadium and his hometown of Geelong recently to catch a Cats game. These are his musings...

There’s long coats and beanies, there’s adults and kids sharing the anticipation equally - it’s hard to know who is leading who into the ground. This is Australian Rules Football on a Saturday night in Geelong. 

I grew up in Geelong, the small bay-side town reliant on manufacturing and the gateway to the coastal paradise of the Great Ocean Road. It was a great place to grow up. The neighbourhoods were contained and walkable, half an hour in any direction and I was still amongst the wide streets and weatherboard homes that I recognised. There were sports to play, a cinema, a shopping-mall for the teenagers and lots of beaches. 

Adult life took me away from Geelong. It was a quick decision and one I was eager to act on. I needed to shed my small-town upbringing and become a cosmopolitan city-slicker. I had to rebel against my story, I needed to show Melbournians I could converse with them about city-issues such as; politics, coffee shops and which restaurants are worth lining up for. I needed to belong. As I mature I realise how important my small-town, bay-side, unable to get dinner after 9pm upbringing was - I felt its importance so strongly walking into the stadium of the Geelong Cats.

The Cats are woven into the fabric of Geelong children. The extent to which the Cats permeate your life is incredible. School excursions are made to the ground, players hold footy clinics at local clubs, the town is such a size that each child has likely met two players - past or present - outside the club. At primary school, an art teacher was married to a Cats legend and at my first job I served another player sausage rolls. This is not to count the myriad visits I remember at school when players would come in wearing their blue and white polo shirts and talk about topics ranging from healthy eating to stranger danger; the men who were speaking to us were not strangers, they were Geelong Cats, they were as trusted as policemen.

During the week I asked my brother if he would like to visit the stadium that we knew so intimately in the town down the highway. He organised some tickets; growing up in Geelong also means that you should always be able to find someone who can spare a ticket. We walked into the ground, through our old neighbourhood, muscle memory dictated when we turned left, right or crossed the road on the diagonal. It had been 10 years since we had walked those streets together but it didn't matter.

At the ground, the wind carried the rain diagonally into the long coats of the Geelong faithful. I recognised voices; my under 16s footy coach hurried along beside me - much shorter than I remember, there was the lady who worked reception at the family dentist and other faces that intersected at various points throughout my childhood. The stadium had changed a lot since we were kids. 

‘I used to skate in that stand’ said my brother pointing to the far stand with tiered concrete standing-room and no seats. As a 12 year-old, on a weekday afternoon he would practice tricks up and down while the players trained, harmoniously sharing the space with the other. The Cats and that stadium really are intertwined with a Geelong upbringing.

The game we watched, this time drinking mid strength beer, was typically Geelong. It was like any game I had watched at that stadium previously except this time I huddled in clothes I chose, instead of being wrapped up in a parker jacket thrown over me by mum. The ball moved across the oval the same as it always did, like my own muscle memory when walking to the ground, the ball had muscle memory too. Quick along the far wing and slow along the other. The flanks and pockets had the same energy as they always had. Ask a football fan to explain this phenomenon to you and they will, but trust me, no amount of attrition can undo the natural way a football oval operates. 

The game ended, the Geelong theme song played, the familiar voices of my childhood began to sing and cheer. It was exactly what I wanted when I asked for the tickets, it was nostalgic, a welcoming home, a realisation that I am no longer trying to escape the small-town with bayside views where I grew up. 

The opening line in the Cats’ song is We are Geelong and the entire stadium and I sang along.