IT MIGHT be standard fare in cricket season, but you don't often see the Mexican wave doing the rounds of an arena during an AFL match. Let alone with five or so minutes to go and only a kick or two the difference.

Yet that was the surreal scene at the end of Saturday night's Hall of Fame match. And it said plenty about the place state football occupies in the hearts and minds of the public. Or rather, doesn't.

There's no doubt a crowd of 70,000-odd was a great turnout. No doubt there was some great individual talent on display and some fine football played. But it's emotional investment that helps make our game what it is, and Saturday night was devoid of it.

And that's not just because the Big V was up against an opponent representing no particular place, or without any fan base of which to speak.

Sure, there were a couple of token "Kick A Vic" signs at the MCG from the odd South or West Australian expat, but even the once boiling-hot juices of Victorian hatred seemed to have cooled decidedly over the decade or so since the state-of-origin concept lapsed.

The football folk in Adelaide and Perth have their showdowns and derbies over which to froth with rage about now, more proof that a couple of decades down the post-nationalisation track, it's the pitched battles within a football state rather than the long-distance warfare across the borders upon which AFL fanaticism is founded.

Where once it was the players themselves who seemed least enthusiastic about playing state football, it's these days they, as noted by AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou, who drive the motivational bus.

Yet for all that genuine interest, there was still a decided lack of physicality about Saturday night's game.

There was the odd bump here and there. A little jostling between the two teams just after half-time. Yet nothing remotely inclined to stir a big crowd to deliver a passionate spray at or launch a defence of any individual or either team.

The crowd seemed to sense it, too, hence the extended periods of near-silence even just after the game had just started.

At the start of the game, you would have looked around the 70,000 at the MCG and thought the people had voted with their feet.

By the end, as you watched the wave sweep around the stands a fourth, fifth and six time as a high-standard game came to a climax, you knew the people had instead voted by jumping out of their seats and sticking their arms in the air.