“IT all happens here at the G…”

You don’t even have to imagine those words in Bill Lawry’s voice to know that they aren’t simply part of some urban folklore. Or one of the many marketing gimmicks doing the rounds. Far from it in fact. For every year, around this time, it all does happen at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).

On the flight from Brisbane to Melbourne you meet an elderly couple and a construction worker, all heading southwards for a Christmas reunion. But it’s Boxing Day that is on everyone’s lips. Almost everyone you meet is either basking in the elation of having procured a ticket or lamenting about having missed out on it for yet another year.

Unlike most great sporting venues, the MCG doesn’t jump out into the city skyline from a distance. Located at a walking distance from the main city centre, there are many ways to approach the G. Jollimont Station is right at its doorstep. Buses are another option. But Monday was about getting there via the city’s extremely well-connected tram system. You board one from Chapel Street—the Colaba Causeway of Melbourne—get off at the busy intersection on Collins Street, then take another one to Hilton Hotel. Imagine being in a local train in Mumbai stuttering towards CST after its penultimate stop at Masjid at cruise-mode, and the rhythm of the wheel’s motion more staggered than frenetic. That’s how it feels to be in a Melbourne tram. Except that the views along the way are a lot quainter.

You ask around for the MCG. The locals point towards it without fuss but with evident curiosity in their eyes. The MCG cannot be mentioned with an air of reverence in these parts.

The vast expanse of the Yarra Park, on which the MCG is located, with its sky-scraping eucalyptus trees is what blocks out the view. The leviathan 75-metre high light towers—the tallest among all sports stadiums in the world—then suddenly come into view, rising into the blue sky like a giant celestial snake, as you criss-cross your way past the green mass. So do the enormous stands that give the MCG its colossal feel.

The concourse around the MCG, which also plays host to the AFL in the cricketing off-season, doesn’t just represent sporting greatness, it stands for an Australian way of life and those who lived and breathed it to the core. Bronze statues of Shane Warne, Dennis Lillee, Keith Miller, Bill Ponsford and Don Bradman, to name a few, surround the MCG, with the many gates named after the who’s who of Australian sporting aristocracy, the Bradmans, the Ponsfords and the Woodfulls.

They say it doesn’t even take a full-house at the MCG to give you goosebumps. Just standing out there in the middle, surrounded by the colossal vastness, is good enough for the hair strands on the back of the neck to stand.

The atmosphere, the drama, the history. Come Friday, they’ll all be there to see as close to 100,000 turn up nursing Christmas hangovers but still thirsty for more as the MCG takes centre-stage. Like the hoarding says, it all will be happening at the G.