The buzz in the air as the punters flooded into the new Sydney Football Stadium was unmistakable.
Eager fans lined up at the stadium gates and the queues were long and deep as they waited impatiently to be a part of history.
Desperate fans wanders around outside, holding up handmade signs saying "Tickets Wanted" in an effort to be part of it. Everybody who's anybody on the rugby league scene was there because they had to be there. A stadium can only open once.
The capacity crowd of 41,906 wanted a thriller, a classic, a game to tell the grandkids about. They didn't get it from either match.
The Tricolours tore the Dragons to shreds 34-6 in the NRLW courtesy of a five-star performance from halfback Raecene McGregor before the Roosters and Rabbitohs teased elements of brilliance in the men's match, which also went the way of the home side 26-12.
But opening nights can be overrated. Not every premiere gives us a money shot like Mitch Moses screaming to the sky as the Eels destroyed the Tigers in their first match at the new Parramatta Stadium back in 2019.
Melbourne lost their first game at AAMI Park in 2010. Brisbane went down when they re-opened Lang Park in 2003. Neither game was much to write home about.
Even the first iteration of the SFS opened with a whimper rather than a bang back in 1988 — the Dragons accounted for the Roosters pretty easily, and less than 20,000 people showed up.
A house doesn't become a home overnight, even if you've spent somewhere around $850 million to build the joint.
Memories are what turns a stadium into a temple, just ask the people who champion the glory of standing on the hill at Leichhardt Oval and the magic of watching football somewhere so hopelessly and gloriously of the past, even as the ground crumbles around them.
The old SFS had that same kind of magic, especially when the mind retreats into the warm nostalgia of the 1990s, when Video Ezy was king, dial-up was as good as the internet got and almost every single rugby league game that mattered in Australia was played at the SFS.
People loved that old ground, so much so that there are pieces of the vanished stadium — seats, advertising signage, or what have you — taking up room in the garages and sheds of some of Sydney's most notable rugby league tragics.
They're just bits of plastic, but they're also so much more because it's like anything else — they have meaning because we give it to them.
Maybe the new ground can have that same spirit one day. It's something they're trying to build — at the request of the stadium brass, the victorious Roosters scrawled their names on a concrete column in the bowels of the ground to commemorate the night.
But right now, the story of the new house is yet to be written.
At the moment, the new SFS is shiny and new and a wonderful place to watch the footy.
It feels old and new at the same time, like a muscle car that's been done up and retrofitted so it connects to your smartphone.
The Rabbitohs would be mad if they didn't do everything they possibly can to make the new stadium their permanent home.
Compared to the vast emptiness of the dated and tired Stadium Australia, going to the new SFS is like arriving in the future.
On Friday night the new house heaved back and forth and howled in all the right places as rugby league's two oldest rivals did their old dance together for the 250th time.
Even accounting for both games falling short of classic status, there were moments that bear remembrance, like Roosters halfback Sam Walker creating a try for himself out of nothing, or Souths winger Taane Milne's incredible finish in the corner, or McGregor carving the Dragons up like they were a Sunday roast.
The loudest things happened, like they always do, to Rabbitohs fullback Latrell Mitchell. More than any player of modern times, he is blessed or cursed to live in the spotlight.
Early on, he was wearing heavy shots from his former comrades, trying short drop-outs that didn't go ten metres and put in a kick on tackle zero that led to a try.
Later he buried sideline conversion that kept the Rabbitohs in the match right in front of a sea of braying Roosters fans then thumped his chest in triumph and defiance afterwards.
Then he was sin-binned in the final ten minutes for playing at the ball in the ruck so cynically you be forgiven for thinking it was guerilla marketing for Saturday's Wallabies-Springboks clash.
The was enough of the good stuff to whet the appetite for next week, when the two sides will play again at the same venue and both will have a lot more skin in the game and the stars rested this night will return.
Both teams' seasons will be on the line and if the good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise we'll get the first classic of this new world, because nothing on earth brings the same kind of heat as a sudden-death semi-final.
Regardless of the result, it will mark the end of the first story of the new stadium's rugby league life — either of South Sydney bouncing back or the Roosters ending their arch rivals season with two quick headshots.
There will be others to come, new twists on classic tales in all the rectangular football codes — next year's Anzac Day game will be a momentous event, Wallabies, Socceroos and Matildas games will take on a new life and the new stadium might even be enough to bring the punters back and resurrect the glory days of Sydney FC.
All these things can happen and even more beside. The future of a shiny new house has endless possibilities. Now the stadium belongs to tomorrow, just as surely as the old one belongs to the yesterday.
