Things change. Sometimes you lose. The Gabba Hill is no more. It has given way to the concrete and plastic amphitheatre that is the new Gabba—a smaller version of the MCG but without any of the associated history. It’s a ground that could be anywhere in the modern world. These words are not intended to be a brainless whinge and a nostalgic lament for the passing of the old Gabba. This is an acknowledgement that the new urban sports ritual is in fact, for some of us, a very different sports ritual to the one we knew and loved for the happy period of a quarter of a century.

I first started attending the Gabba in the mid-1970s. It was a special treat to come down from the country to watch a day of the Test match, usually in late November. It meant missing a day of school. In those days we sat in the grandstand and had little idea of what happened on the Hill. This was where the so-called yobbos sat—an ugly breed of rough-edged Australians—and carried out their decadent practices. I was from a sober, middle-class Protestant family.