Fear and loathing evaporates amid NRL’s Anzac Day pageantry

I didn’t cry, not really. I certainly wasn’t blubbering. Yet in those pregnant moments after the bugler’s rendition of The Last Post had rung around the Sydney Cricket Ground and 35,273 rugby league fans had stood silently in honour of those who had fought and died for Australia and New Zealand, I thought of my grandad who had gone to New Guinea and of all the other grandads, the ones who didn’t come home. And be damned if my glasses didn’t mist up.

Earlier I’d arrived at the famous old ground for the traditional Anzac Day match between the Sydney Roosters and St George Illawarra Dragons with the same sort of joy and nagging fear I always hold for this fixture. I love the day and what it means, but worry whether it should be “celebrated” and whether all the flags and military imagery are too “American”. There are questions over the fetishisation of war and the fine line between pride and nationalism.

Related: Dragons hold on to stun Roosters in NRL Anzac Day upset

Then there is the language of war used in the context of a sporting event. Perhaps Keith Miller had it right with words to the effect of: cricket is a game; pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse. But then, these words are only descriptors. Your grandma may battle to walk up the shops. It’s brave to speak publicly if you’ve had a stutter. Bonecrusher and Our Waverley Star “fought a two horse war” in the 1986 WS Cox Plate. And so on.

On the field, the warm-up game was a raggedly entertaining clash (we can use “clash”, right?) between Turkey and the Australian Defence Force. There were marching bands and an explanation of what Air Force cadets do (in this case, march into the SCG carrying flags). Defence types drove by in combat vehicles and there were