The Olympic stage is set

Letter From... Sydney

In any contest between a good big 'un and a good little 'un, the big 'un will always win. The old sporting adage has often been demonstrated by beefy Australian ball-players against their puny northern hemisphere rivals, and the same principle has been lavishly applied to Stadium Australia. The brand new venue for the 2000 Olympics saw its first competitive action on Saturday with a double-header of matches to start the rugby league season here.

On an occasion soaked in superlatives, a crowd of 104,500 - the biggest ever to witness a game of the 13-man code - could slake its thirst at 53 bars, capable between them of serving 80,000 pints an hour. Including the spectacular light and laser show between matches, spectators were entertained using enough electricity to heat half a million meat pies, and after eating and drinking their fill, no fewer than 1,500 toilets stood by to ensure there was no queue even for the ladies' loo - two out of every three conveniences are female.

So thorough were the preparations, indeed, that during the week all 1,500 were flushed simultaneously to test out the plumbing.

Rugby league's authorities here seized on this chance to promote theirs as a family sport, capable of delivering quality entertainment to the nation. Stressing the abundance and efficiency of lavatories may be part of this effort, since pre-season preparations were marred by an unsavoury incident involving a player from Sydney Souths who smeared the walls of his motel room with excrement while on tour at Dubbo in rural New South Wales.

Given a fair go and with everything in its proper place, the custodians of rugby's younger brother believe the oval ball moves swiftly and sweetly enough through six tackles and play-the-balls to establish theirs as the premier sport over rival claims from union and Aussie rules.

To clean up its image, the National Rugby League even went so far as to commission an ode from the Irish-Australian poet, Thomas Keneally. Pre-season adverts featured the bard himself, stalking a rainswept Manly Beach in white beard and anorak, anticipating the excitement ahead: "And I'm seven again/I know I'll see heroes soon."

In the event, Manly slumped to a final score of 41-18, sufficiently one-sided for the crowd to seek its own entertainment. And here one shortcoming of Stadium Australia became evident. After the Olympics, the ground will sprout a retractable roof and capacity will fall to 80,000, but for now it is 110,000, with two huge ends, like cupped hands cradling the pitch, their fingers extending high into the air. But the angle of elevation required for these vertiginous structures means they are not contiguous with the grandstands, which makes it difficult to generate the unbroken momentum required for a decent Mexican wave.

A sporting event as participative entertainment, with cheerleaders brandishing pom-poms and live music, is a concept imported from America, of course, along with tens of thousands of Cyalume sticks, tubes of plastic distributed around the stadium which, when bent in the middle, emit a blue or gold fluorescence - a small way for spectators themselves to feel part of things.

This Disney-fied "third wave" of sports stadium development was a natural further step after the initial straightforward people-holders had been adapted for television. According to its designers, Stadium Australia epitomises the "fourth wave", its fibreoptic skeleton capable of providing, in years to come, a personal interactive video screen to every seat if so required.

But this facility might turn out to be a case of more proving, on closer inspection, to be less. Plenty of people - including the family groups league is keen to attract - came to the match to interact with each other and provide an exciting alternative for junior to the enticements of PC and TV at home.

The sense of comfort, space and openness in the sloping tiers of bleachers means that Stadium Australia has created a near-perfect environment for that.

Jake Lynch