North Sydney Oval

Isbi continues her steady recovery from surgery so by late morning I felt at liberty to leave her at the apartment firmly entrenched in a telephone call with her sister 59.
*trigger warning for those not historically inclined!
I opted for a lazy hour 2 kms down the road at the heritage listed North Sydney Oval where the 1st grade match was in progress between the locals UTS North Sydney and their neighbours Manly Warringah. This beautiful ground is historically significant not because it’s around the corner from my childhood home or because I played there a couple of times in the early ‘70s but because everything about it is either original or a reconstruction in the appropriate style. The most notable is the Bob Stand in the blip. This was originally constructed at the SCG in the 1890s but when threatened with demolition 100 years later, it was dismantled, transported across the Harbour and reconstructed in its current location. It was called the Bob Stand because during the Depression in the ‘30s, it only cost a bob (one shilling) to get in and watch the rogue pommie captain Douglas Jardine and the much more gentlemanly Australians in one of the infamous body line Test matches in 1933. It was also cheap as it was on the eastern side of the SCG so by the time the boys had a skin full in the afternoon, they were looking directly into the sun.