Lights out in Melbourne: lack of footy in Australia's capital of sport amplifies city's sullen silence

“Melbourne has no summer,” the novelist George Johnstone once wrote, “only a period of hibernation between football seasons.” In Melbourne, there was nothing surer than footy. It was always there. It was there too much, to be honest. Even last summer, when half the state was on fire, when it was raining dirt and when our air quality was rated the worst on the planet, footy would still chisel its way into the conversation.

During Melbourne’s initial lockdown, I didn’t miss footy as much as I thought I would. The old obsessions seemed a little childish. The world was on its ass. But there was still life in Melbourne. We were blessed with the most glorious of autumns. The café owners hauled their chairs back onto the footpaths. Punt Road was gridlocked. We seemed to have avoided the worst.

Related: 'You can't play football over Zoom': Community sport in lockdown | Stephanie Convery

But in early July, on one of those grey Melbourne afternoons where the sky hangs like a giant duvet, they turned off the lights at the MCG. It had been a horrible weekend in the city. Just a few kilometres from the ground, nine public housing towers were under strict lockdown. Positive cases were spiking. People were dying. And now our sport – the sport this town obsesses over – had been relocated to sunnier and safer shores.

Melbourne’s winters are not particularly nasty. But they really drag on. It can feel like three months of 13C days. All the things that make it tolerable – the festivals, the galleries, the bars and the footy – were now denied to us. Melburnians were dog tired, anxious, increasingly unwilling to follow the rules and looking for someone to blame. Social media was a cesspool. We all knew someone who had lost their job, or whose business was on the brink. My local pub, a typical footy pub with an open fire, an 18-year-old cat, four big screens and every pisspot and ear basher this side of the Yarra, was boarded up and padlocked. Footage surfaced of crackpots refusing to wear masks. One was straight from central casting – a self-proclaimed exorcist, flapping her gums and scouring the aisles for a shovel to build a Viking firepit.

To listen to these dipshits, or to wade through Twitter for 10 minutes, was enough to tip you over the edge. To clear my head, I bought a new Sherrin football. I took it everywhere with me. I sniffed the leather like some sort of deviant. I slapped it from hand to hand. I broke about half a dozen lamps in my apartment. It quickly wore down, lost its shape and became waterlogged.

Mindful of not decapitating some poor hound tottering around the goal-square, I took pot shots from the deep pockets at my local oval. It used to be footy’s most feral and intimidating venue. It was where Nicky Winmar lifted his jumper. It was where Tank O’Donoghue ironed out Geoff Hayward in The Club. It was now frequented by hipsters, semi-retired academics, fully-retired greyhounds, meth addicts, personal trainers, psychotic sausage dogs, miscellaneous lurkers and blokes like me, chasing old glories. My quads and hamstrings weren’t up to it. My kicks had no penetration. They never did really. But every now and then, I’d flush one. The ball would bend like a pretzel. I’d crane my neck, tilt my torso and will it through the goals. I’d puff my chest out and collect my footy. I’d glance up to see whether anyone was watching. They never were.

There is hardly anyone down there now. It is mainly just dogs – the big winners of this pandemic – dashing through the corridor and crapping on the 50-metre line.

When you live behind a mask and are subject to an 8pm curfew, it feels trite to even talk about football. But it is a huge part of life in this state. It matters. And its absence is particularly gutting at this time of year. Across Victoria, there are roughly half a million registered footballers. There are thousands of teams. Like cricket, Australian football’s great charms lie at the grass roots level. A D-grade amateur game can be just as willing – and every bit as enthralling – as a game at the MCG.

The leagues are all so different. Some competitions are pretty much grazing paddocks for old timers looking for an endorphin rush and a few beers. Some attract local footy’s mercenaries – guys who kick big swags of goals and pocket their envelopes. The amateur teams play on beautifully curated grounds and their stars are young and slight. The top suburban and country leagues are dominated by bigger bodies and older heads.

Normally at this time of year – in the inner city, in the outer suburbs, at the foot of the snowfields and in dairy country – they would be gearing up for finals. The junior finals would already be in full swing. On Saturday afternoons, you would open your window and hear the whistles and the cries of “ball!” For anyone visiting from overseas, it was even more ridiculous than the hook turns. It was utterly baffling to them.

There is none of that now. So many of these clubs run on the smell of an oily rag. And so many of them will struggle to hang on. So many of the young players now face unemployment and an uncertain future. For tens of thousands of footballers and volunteers, the lack of a footy club adds to the disconnection, the torpor, the sense that everything is coming unglued.

The AFL’s 20-day orgy of footy helps. It fills a hole. Some of the football has been dire, some of it sublime. But there are pangs of longing and resentment. The Eagles fans are still booing. People are actually sitting in the sun drinking beer. For a Melburnian, it is a rude reminder of another time, a pre-pandemic life. Sometimes, you look at them sourly. You lucky pricks.

Related: Community sport: 'When we started playing, I forgot about the virus. It was absolutely thrilling'

You also look back on all the things you used to gripe about – the officiating, the rolling mauls, the moronic commentary. They are still genuine grounds for grievance, mind you. But they seem so quaint right now. So much wasted energy, so much hot air. Remember the way tribunal hearings would turn into two and three day morality trials? The way Kane Cornes would find 25 things to object to by lunchtime? The way, on AFL 360, Mark Robinson would react to a two-goal loss like someone had just set fire to his house?

The other night, I went for my mandated daily walk, incorporating a lap of the MCG concourse. I’m a classic introvert but I’ve found myself missing crowds, missing the MCG crush. No where else, Gideon Haigh once wrote, “can one enjoy such a perfect balance of solitude and companionship.” Up close, as always, it looked a bit grim, a concrete monstrosity. But it still had that gravitational draw. I marvelled, as I always do, at the sculptural menace of the Leigh Matthews and Denis Lillee statues. I passed a mini platoon in army fatigues. One by one, they nodded at me. There was no-one else. The city was silent and sullen. The wind whipped harder. I trudged home, narrowly beat the curfew, tore off my mask, muted Brian Taylor, and sat down to watch my team.