Harry Gill, Warnie and the Flying Man: Crowd interactions unite us like little else

Sydney Morning Herald

2 days ago

Harry does so and ... the ball sticks!
GOT HIM, YES! Mahvellous catch, that.
The cameras pan to Harry, as the whole thing is played in slo-mo on the big screen, and it is realised he didn't even spill a drop of the grog. The perfect catch. Oh, how the crowd roars, and the nation has a rare moment of complete unity.
'The catch was phenomenal,' Tom Birmingham of the Hello Sport podcast sagely observes. 'Two cans in the hand means he's an alpha male. He looked excited and pleased with himself, but also, in a way, like he does it all the time. This will be shown forever, like that guy smoking the dart behind the sight screen.'
And you, Harry?
What did you make of it?
'Happy with it,' he says with a smile. 'My phone is blowing up ... I wish I had a durry in my mouth.'
And a star is born.
Another way to fame for fans, of course, is when they interact with the players in a way that causes headlines.
In Australian sport, an infamous occasion was five decades ago when the third streaker that day jumped the fence to disrupt the second Test between Australia and New Zealand at Eden Park. Our own Greg Chappell, frustrated beyond measure, chased the fellow – Leonard Bruce McCauley – and gave him a couple of smacks on the backside for his trouble. Marvellous stroke that. (McCauley sued for assault, lost and was fined for disorderly conduct. I'd like to think he declined to take his seat for the short court process, for comfort's sake.)
And a globally famous episode was three decades ago, when Manchester United were playing against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park, in January 1995, and Man U's Eric Cantona was sent off, only to receive a gobful of abuse from a spectator, in the front row, one Matthew Simmons.
Something in Cantona snapped, and he launched a kung-fu-style kick right at him, connecting, and causing the immortal headline in the News of the World the next morning: 'THE SHIT HITS THE FAN!' (Cantona, was given a nine-month suspension and a £20,000 fine.)
But, back to the catches.
For my money, there'll never be a better fan catch than what happened one night during an NFL match between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears. When, on September 11, 1995, Chicago's Kevin Butler kicked a field goal– call it Frank Hyde, for the old days – It's high enough, it's long enough, and it's straight between the posts – the ball kept lazily spinning, arcing towards the stands.
Suddenly, from the front row, a young Chicago fan, Mike Pantazis, leapt into the abyss to actually catch it, before plummeting some five or six metres to the ground, still with ball in hand! He tossed the ball to an official and resumed his seat, as the crowd went berserk. You honestly have to see it to believe it.
Very, very occasionally, the fan who catches the ball already has a fame to rival the players.
Such was the case in a tennis match between Roger Federer and Andrew Murray at the Australian Open in 2013, when Federer attempted an impossible return from a Murray lob, only for the ball to fly into the crowd.