Our First Home Game

Wanderland opened at four o'clock at Family In Faith Christian Church, and the carnival games were busy before the players had finished warming up. Kids worked their way around the stations with a passport to stamp, parents queued for burritos and fresh juice, and the merch tent did not stop.

At twenty past five everyone wandered over to Camera Park together, which is the part we will keep doing forever. A few hundred people walking to a football pitch in pink is a strange and excellent sight.

The football was genuinely good. Sam Froslid and Samir Ghiasi scored our first two goals at home, North United answered both times, and 2–2 was a fair reflection of ninety minutes that never really settled down.

Then the bit we had been quietly nervous about: we invited everyone onto the pitch at full time to sing the anthem with the players. They came. They sang. Nobody had to be asked twice.

One point from our first home game, and a much better answer to the question of whether this works.