MELBOURNE, Australia — The National Football League staged its first regular-season game in Australia on Friday, a 27-7 win by the San Francisco 49ers over the Los Angeles Rams before a sellout crowd of 100,021 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, roughly 41,000 of whom returned to the stadium Saturday morning for what they understood to be the second day of play.
The game, in which the Rams were the designated home team, kicked off at 10:35 a.m. Friday local time, or 5:35 p.m. Thursday on the U.S. West Coast, and ended a little over three hours later. Ground staff said a large share of the crowd remained seated after the final whistle, unwrapped sandwiches, and asked when the tea interval would be. The stadium was cleared at 4 p.m. When the gates reopened Saturday at 9:30 a.m. for routine maintenance, approximately 41,000 spectators were waiting outside with cushions, sunscreen, and scorecards they had begun keeping themselves.
“Three hours is not a match. Three hours is a warm-up,” said Graham Pettifer, 71, of the suburb of Box Hill, who said he has attended a match at the ground on at least one day of every summer since 1968. “You don’t fly two teams all that way to play a session and go home. You give the thing a proper chance to develop.”
With no players present, the crowd proceeded with the match on its own. By Saturday afternoon, spectators in the southern stand had reconstructed the 49ers’ first-day performance from memory and declared their innings closed at 27, and had sent two volunteers in white jumpers out to the 50-yard line to open the batting for the Rams, who required 21 to win. The volunteers had no ball, bat, or knowledge of either sport, but made 14 runs by Sunday lunch, which spectators described as “a gritty knock.” On Monday, the fourth day, the ground’s original scoreboard operator returned from retirement to post the score by hand, and a standing ovation was held for Friday’s coin toss, which had, in the crowd’s view, “never really been given its due.”
Prof. Desmond Achterberg, who holds the Prewitt Chair in Comparative Annoyance at Ellery State University, said the misunderstanding reflected two incompatible traditions. “The scholarship divides the sporting world into nations that believe a contest should be decided and nations that believe a contest should be experienced,” Achterberg said. “American football ends because the clock says so. Cricket ends when everyone has had lunch enough times. Neither side has ever fully trusted the other’s sense of time.”
League officials have confirmed that the game ended Friday and that the result stands at 27-7. A ground steward said spectators had been informed of this repeatedly and had received it “politely, the way you’d receive news about a different match.”
At 5:40 p.m. Tuesday, at the close of the fifth day, the remaining 23,000 spectators rose, applauded both absent sides, declared the match a draw, and went home. The Rams, who did not attend days two through five, have been credited by the crowd with “a determined rearguard effort.”