Dress the kids in the red and the white, catch the train to the big smoke. Stride up Foveaux St and join a throng of comrades streaming into the ground, the mood buoyant, anticipation high.

This is where Bradman played, Dally Messenger and Plugger. It’s where Steve Waugh hit his “red cloth” century. Tradition, with all its power and its absurdity, is there in the old aesthetic of the Members’ stand, and the fact there still is a “ladies stand”. 

Even up high there’s intimacy, and that’s why it could be the best sporting venue in the country. Friends from Melbourne, or from the US, laugh at that. I stick to my guns, but by the end of every game the SCG has dashed my hopes again.

Let’s start with the $6.20 chips, a privilege for which you must queue for 10 minutes. Then they run out. In the 2^nd quarter. For four kids, it’s almost $30 just for potato.

Beers are above $8 and they’re headless, poured earlier by a rookie and left to go flat. There’s one full-strength “choice”.

Every poor sod who works there looks like it’s their first time. Perhaps they only last one shift.

In our plebeian seats (still near $80 each) the food is dire, it’s expensive, the choice minimal, the lines enormous. I can handle two or three of these, but all four at the same time gives the distinct impression that the SCG doesn’t give a rat’s about its customers.

This is where the SCG Trust is damaging the AFL, and the Sydney Swans.

Compare it to stadiums across the US, where local dishes have become iconic features – and a drawcard. It’s the pulled pork roll at a Brooklyn game, fish tacos in San Diego, macaroni and cheese in Green Bay, a crab roll in Seattle, empanadas in Miami, the Korean beef sandwich in Arlington, Texas, even the helmet full of nachos at Dodger Stadium, LA. 

At the SCG there’s some sorry fish and chips, perhaps a hot dog, a pie in a packet, and it all costs a fortune. In the fancier areas you might find some El Cheapo mass produced pizza. Can’t we manage something slightly healthy, fun, or at least slightly Sydney?

We are in the midst of a craft beer revolution, and a stadium full of Swans fans is your target market. But you’ll need to be Sherlock Holmes to find one at the SCG. Why not a few proper local brewery outlets drawn from the city around?

The difference is one of effort. As long as the SCG Trust allows its catering contract to be managed this way, it will continue to disappoint on the issue of “match day experience”.

At the SCG the goal seems to be doing it on the cheap, at the expense of the matchgoer, who instead of arriving early and enjoying the facilities before and after, leaves the ground with the feeling they’ve been stung. Again.

The late Sir Donald Bradman called the SCG “unsurpassed” – with the caveat “excluding all considerations other than those inside the fence”.

Spot on, Don. Outside the fence, your local amateur soccer ground treats patrons better.