Sixty in the house. Bounce.

2040

Much like whether you call it a potato cake or scallop, whether you keep your sauce in the fridge or cupboard, or if it’s parmi or parma, there’s two clearly defined belligerents in the war on suburban footy with very little neutrality.

In one corner, the modern day corporate shills, bewitched by their soulless values of “profit margin” and “big stadia”, a desire to force the footy into the heartless megastructures funded by the very fans who have to often take three different modes of transport to even get to Sydney Olympic Park or Moore Park, an end product resulting in a sardonic game of Where’s Wally as you try and spot the visibly few fans in attendance.

Against them, the nostalgia warriors, the emotional punter clinging onto a false ideal of a bygone era, romanticising muddy hills and minimal toilet facilities. To some, there’s no greater Valhalla than jamming into a telephone box with 15,000 of your closest friends to watch 30% of a football match and spend half your time in a queue for a beer or a piss.

At the very centre of this debate is the Wests Tigers holiday home of Leichhardt Oval, a sun drenched monolith among the quaint terraces of Sydney’s inner west. A rugby league honeypot tucked away in a labyrinthine assortment of one way streets and laneways hugging the banks of the Parramatta River.

Full disclosure. I love Leichhardt Oval. It was the closest footy ground to where I grew up, and while I’m not a Tigers fan, my father is, so we spent countless weekend afternoons packed into the Norm Robinson Stand or hunting for a spare patch of grass on the hill, often to witness yet another miserable Tigers defeat before trying to remember which narrow avenue we left the car parked on.

Even though my attitudes towards the Tigers fortunes remain firmly neutral, the memories of my childhood at Leichhardt Oval still evoke a strong positive response as I reminisce even today.

I remember feeling the air being sucked out of the place as James Tedesco tore his ACL on his NRL debut vs. Cronulla. I remember the palpable electricity as Robbie Farah fed Anthony Watts a premium knuckle sandwich in a scrum.

There’s something intrinsic and inexplicable about the quainter venues in the league, those spiritual homes held together by Elastoplast and history, the whispering tales of the halcyon days echoing through each ancient timber foundation and rusted seat.

All of that emotion and hysteria came to the fore in a bubbling tornado of unbridled energy on Saturday night as the Tigers put 66, yes, 66 points on the floundering North Queensland Cowboys, sending them back to the outpost loveless and alone.

66 points is a metric shitload of points for one team to score in a single game. Hell, it’s a huge amount for both teams combined. But for a team with the worst attack in the competition to turn it on like the Greatest Show on Turf and get everyone on the hill murmuring to each other that there was a bit of a 2005 vibe about the place, well it was everything that’s good about rugby league that you can’t put into words.

There was the spirit fingers aimed at the scoreboard, the attendant sent into a panicked scramble as he looked for the six and zero tiles, mere moments after settling in from the previous try, the hill erupting into a singular chorus of noise at the display of the big sixty.

Or how about Valentine Holmes, a bonafide superstar outside back in our game, an entrenched member of the Queensland Maroons and Australian Kangaroos, emerging from the game with a jersey cleaner than when he entered, thanks to the thorough bathing he received at the hands of Starford To’a, who would finish the match with FIVE line breaks, two tries and about 940 running metres.

You’ve heard of disrespectful field goals, but how about disrespectful conversions? Brandon Wakeham, bored of slotting them from every inch of the park, handed over the reigns to 44% career kicker Api Koroisau, who proceeded to casually cash one in from the right sideline, sending the crowd into slightly confused delirium.

Former Tigers weren’t spared ambush and anguish either, with every error made by the returning Luciano Leilua magnified and ridiculed by an increasingly parochial and riled crowd, now sensing audience participation was the order of the day, much like a screening of The Room at the Hayden Orpheum.

The majestic little bow on top of this cacophony of ecstasy was a little known battler by the name of Luke Brooks, oft maligned and thoroughly scrutinised, the cause of all problems at the club and a blockade to progress.

Well, Luke Brooks, despite the sneering dismissal bordering on sheer public contempt and division, reached 200 games for the joint venture, and the script writers were certainly on board with this one. If you were told on Friday that the Tigers would score 66 points in a Luke Brooks milestone game at Leichhardt Oval, you would’ve scoffed at the overt cheesiness of it all.

Finishing with two try assists, a linebreak, five tackle breaks and a monstrous 212 running metres, Brooks left the ground to rapturous applause, chants of “Brooksy” ringing around the leafy surrounds of Glover Street, all with his family in the stands, as well as some close mates and former Tigers like Josh Reynolds and Mitchell Moses.

Luke Brooks had his moment, and it will be etched in history forever.

66 points is the most points ever by not only a Wests Tigers side, but by a Balmain Tigers or Western Suburbs Magpies side either. One frosty May evening in the inner west, 12,000 rabid diehards witnessed history.

Professional sports are, at their core, about the wins and the losses at the end of the day. It’s the cold nature of a multi million dollar industry, results matter. But it’s the moments along the way that shape the experience, the signposts on the journey that make looking back at the end all the sweeter.

Luke Brooks, Leichhardt Oval and the Wests Tigers will always be mired in a state of semi-flux.

For every loss that piles, and every year that passes without finals football, the gremlins eating away at Brooks’ legacy will only grow stronger.

Leichhardt Oval, for all its folksy charm and history, is still a second rate facility for an Australian professional sporting team to call home, however sporadically. The pressures to ditch the intersection of Glover and Mary for all but the occasional exhibition will only intensify as Accor, CommBank and Allianz Stadium sit there unfilled and gathering dust.

The Tigers are the media’s favourite punching bag. Need content during the dog days of the offseason? How about yet another listicle of every first grader the Tigers have let go since 1847?

But for one magical night, Balmain and Wests coalesced into a beautiful singular beast. A joint venture fractured by division amidst financial uncertainty and a miserable lack of success since 2005, there’s been precious little for the most jaded and punished fan base to get excited about since the glory days of Marshall, Prince, Skandalis and Hodgson.

But for one night, all of that was forgotten.

For years to come, pints of Tooheys will be slapped down with enthusiasm on the dusty tables at the Orange Grove Hotel as the locals excitedly reminisce about this one night of insanity. “Do you remember the night the fellas put 60 on the Cows in Brooksy’s 200th?” I can already hear one patron excitedly babble to his peers.

That’s what it’s all about.