Christmas day is a warm up in Melbourne.

The real deal starts the next day.

You see in Melbourne, sport is life, ask any one in the town that doesn’t like sport.

And Boxing Day is part of Melbourne’s culture.

That is what we do in Melbourne, we make dates into cultural sporting events.

The last Saturday in September means the AFL Grand Final, The first Tuesday in November is Melbourne Cup day, and then Boxing Day.

It’s the G’s international moment, and the old girl gets anywhere up to 90,000 people in her.

There is an animal spirit in the ground.

She is not filled with cricket fans, she is full of drunken football fans, free corporate ticket holders, and people who think it’s the place to be.

These people get under the harsh sun, with no real deep understanding of cricket: an opposition team as the Christians, the Locals as the Lions, and then they turn into one drunken throbbing wall of angry noise.

They want blood, and for one of the few times they go to the G, they are all as one – the enemy must be defeated, and we must get drunk.

It’s a coliseum with medium strength beer and cricket.

If you haven’t been there when it’s packed, you can’t know what 100,000 drunken people baying for blood, and yelling ‘it’s your shout mate’, sounds like.

This year could be different. Australia have won the last nine boxing days, so the crowd has been drunk, but happy, what will happen if the happiness dissipates?

Well they will just get drunker, and maybe throw the odd golf ball.

People often say cricket grounds have their own personality, if so the G would be a loud drunken woman who is great fun to go out drinking with, but once a year is more than enough.

But you wouldn’t want to hang out with her if she was in a bad mood.

Jrod is an Australian cricket blogger, his site Cricketwithballs.net won July’s Best of Blogs in TWC