Add The California Post on Google Kyle Shanahan has had a change of tone now that the 49ers are on the ground in Melbourne, Australia, almost 8,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean from their home base.
No, he hasn’t adopted an accent from Down Under.
“After being here for a couple days,” the San Francisco coach said before his team’s first official practice Monday morning local time (late Sunday back home), “this is the right time to be here, it’s the right place to be and it’s the right team to go against.”
When it was initially announced that the Niners would open the season against the Rams on foreign soil, Shanahan wasn’t a fan. As the designated home team, the Rams got to choose their opponent for the NFL’s first regular-season game on the faraway continent.
Bringing the 49ers along with them didn’t only mean a division rival would have to go through the same rigorous travel — it would also prevent the annual invasion of SoFi Stadium by the San Francisco faithful.
The Rams thought they were robbing the Niners of the extra home game they get every year.
But maybe they didn’t think it all the way through.
“We always have an advantage of having one, I see it as one home game a year in LA. Just the way our fans are and take over that stadium,” Shanahan said. “So, it was disappointing to let them off the hook and get them out of that. But knowing how our fans roll, I have a feeling they won’t be much different here. I expect to have a good showing.”
It’s unlikely that there will be enough fans who make the trek from either San Francisco or LA to determine the home-field advantage in the massive 95,000-seat Melbourne Cricket Ground.
It’ll be the Aussies bringing the energy (per usual).
And why wouldn’t they be on the 49ers’ side with the polar opposite ways the teams have approached the game? San Fran got in Friday morning local time, a full week before kickoff, and headed straight to a flag football clinic. Some players were able to fight off the jet lag to stay up and get a different perspective of where they’ll play, attending an Australian Rules Football match at the MCG.
“I love Australia. I love Mel-bin,” linebacker Fred Warner said, even using the local pronunciation. “Even though it’s spelled Melbourne, I’ve learned it’s Mel-bin.”
“It’s been great,” running back Christian McCaffrey added. “The coffee’s unbelievable. I don’t know why nobody talked about that as much as they should’ve beforehand.”
At least one team seems to be embracing its hosts.
First and foremost this is a business trip, so players got one day to explore before regrouping for game week. But Niners alums, employees and fan clubs have taken over the town.
On Sunday, 49ers cheerleaders set a world record, leading a dance of 1,424 people in the heart of Melbourne. They’ll also visit a local school and take over a stall at the Queen Victoria Night Market. A variety of 49ers are depicted in life-size images on windows and murals on walls across the city, and Flinders Street Station — the primary transit center in a similar architectural style to San Francisco’s iconic Ferry Building — was lit up in red and gold.
The Rams, by contrast, are being downright disrespectful.
While the 49ers spend an entire week in Melbourne, Sean McVay will have his team in and out of the country in less than 36 hours. Almost like they don’t even want to be there.
Maybe it’s the right approach to win the game — but it won’t win them over any fans.
The Australian government invested a reported $45 million to bring the first NFL games to the continent — money well spent in the eyes of the 49ers, who already consider themselves “the globe’s team” (CEO Al Guido’s words) and now get a week of uncontested promotion.
Australia is supposed to be Rams Country. They were awarded the rights to the market by the NFL in 2022 and are one of four teams permitted to advertise in the country (along with the Eagles, Raiders and Seahawks). But they’ve been nowhere to be found.
Notably absent from the list are the 49ers, whose dynasties of the late 1980s and early ’90s already made them Australia’s most popular team before their showing of goodwill this week, according to research conducted by the NFL provided to The Athletic.
So, yes, the Rams will get a respite from Levi’s South. But they’re walking into Levi’s (way, way far) West.
