Jarryd Hayne’s transition from NRL superstar to NFL 49er has been one of the stories of the year. Inside Sport dispatched Matt Cleary to San Francisco to catch the show. While it lasts ...

I’m holding a tin of Down To Earth India Pale Ale decorated with a picture of a monkey in a spacesuit on a beach. The monkey’s just descended from space, his spaceship is marooned on the sand and he’s made a hammock from the parachute of his space-pod. And like the party I’ve just crashed, I’ve never known anything like it. It’s a Sunday in Santa Clara, game day, which means a mobile army of San Francisco 49ers fans is doing what Americans do before every football game. They’re tailgating. In a car park the size of Flemington Racecourse, tens of thousands of people are cooking meat, drinking beer and bopping about to thumping bass beats. And we must bring it to Australia immediately.

There are massive RVs, articulated fantasy cruisers, rock star motor homes, tour buses, stretch limos, pick-up trucks and muscle cars. People are watching football on televisions propped in the back of trucks, DJs are spinning vinyl, men are tossing back shots and roaring “Niners!” and “Aargh!” and other guttural exclamations. It’s a tent city of smoke and fire, and policemen in tight shorts on mountain bikes, and a game in which people toss a beanie ball at a hole in a lump of wood. Like the term “rooting” has different connotations in America and Australia, the beanie-ball game is called “corn-holing”.

The car park is “Blue Lot 1” and is one of several denoted by colours and numbers that surround Levi’s Stadium. There are yellow and red lots, all full of partying tailgate people. There could be 100,000 here, most of whom won’t see the game. They’ve come to share the experience with their tribe. It’s just what they do.

We’re here of course to see our Jarryd “Hayne Plane” Hayne run about as a punt returner, against the Baltimore Ravens. The news has just come through that he’s “active”, meaning he’s made the “run-on” (though “dress-up” might be the better term) squad of 46. This is pleasing to myself and another lone Aussie, Kevin Gibson of Toowoomba, who like me found this party by Googling “49ers” and “Tailgate”.

Three days previously I’d landed at San Francisco International at 7am after a 14-hour flight that left on midday the same day. (When I return I lose an entire day, Wednesday wiped from my history by the international date line, and magic.) San Francisco would prove a fine and generous host. For Sydneysiders it’s familiar. There’s a cracking harbour and bridge and ferries. Wine country is an hour away. And the flat-out barbaric price of real estate is a conversational staple. It’s a cracking town, San Francisco. A heap to do.

I played golf at TPC Harding Park (host of the 2020 PGA Championship), the stunning Half Moon Bay Golf Links (Google it) and Presidio GC in the shadows of Golden Gate Bridge. I took a ferry past Alcatraz and a bus tour around the vineyards of Sonoma and Napa Valley. I watched sport on big TVs in cracking saloon bars and talked fantasy football (a massive deal hereabouts) with local men. I ate a huge and chunky seafood chowder at Cioppino’s at Fisherman’s Wharf, and a great thumping lump of tender pink meat at the renowned House of Prime Rib. Incredible food.

But it’s 49ers football and Hayne Plane and space-monkey beer we’ve come to drink in, and thus we are to Santa Clara in the Silicon Valley, an hour from San Francisco centre by CalTrain and VTA light-rail.

The old ground is called Candlestick Park and locals loved the joint. There’s some grumbling among Niners fans that Levi’s, while comfortable and easy and modern (there is WiFi and an app, and much gleaming glass, and it will host the next Super Bowl), doesn’t have actual fans’ interests at heart. Before the season, people had to buy the right to buy a season ticket, anything from $2000 to $80,000. Then people have to pay for tickets on top of that. The entire season is sold out. And yet this Ravens game is not full.

And it seems to loom on you, Levi’s. You cross a major road and bypass some more car parks full of beer-drinkers and corn-holers, and there it is, a giant glass and steel block of footballing otherworld. It looks like an office tower lying on its side.

After metal detectors and check-points and directions from friendly battle-axes, I’m into an elevator and up to the cavernous media centre. And there, stunningly, is all the food you could eat. There are hot dogs and gyoza dumplings and chicken surprise. There’s a man making omelettes at a special omelette-making station. And it’s all free. Even the beer. Free beer! How long has this been going on? At Leichhardt Oval you’re lucky to get a party pie and a can of Fanta. At Shark Park they serve a soup that might actually have shark in it.

I head to my seat behind a 30-metre-high glass wall and enjoy a thing I love about visiting sports grounds: that first look. The first wow moment, like when you see Old Trafford or Wembley or a 2000-year-old giant sequoia, the world’s biggest tree. People head to the pyramids, Mecca, The Vatican, Star Wars conventions, and that’s all terrific. But stadiums are my cathedrals. And that first look at them ... love it.

Far down below is a brilliant green playing surface, painted like a roulette table. There are super-wide, mega-pixel big screens. Above the concourse seats on the western side is a giant flat wall of glass like the back end of a sky-scraper backed into a stadium. The rest is red seats full of people in red football jumpers. And it is magnificent.

A fog-horn as if from The Lusitania goes off to indicate “60 minutes until player introductions”, that bit in which the players all tear out, with the most famous and important ones announced individually. The mascot thing dances about, a Yosemite Sam sort of creature with a cowboy hat and a mattock called “Sourdough Sam”, a nod to the bread’s place in local history – that’s good bread when it gets a mention in history. There are fit men in shorts running up and downfield, giant flags streaming out behind them. There is a troupe of fire-breathers shooting great gussets of flame into the air. There’s a band of drummers whacking away with theatrical flourish. And there are many gorgeous professional dancing girls.

The fog-horn goes off again and the Ravens run out in their white combat suits. A giant tent is set up at the start of the Niners players’ race. The greater part of their squad bubbles about, including our Jarryd. And then they come screaming through the tent and out on to the field, pumped up like Michelin Men. The dancing girls leap and shake their pom-poms. There’s fire and smoke and booming beats. Drummers whack away. Runners tear about, flags stiff. You know how Bill Lawry would describe it ...

The big names are read out: beefy men NaVorro Bowman and Alex Boone. Running men Carlos Hyde and Vernon Davis. Quarterback Colin “C-Kap” Kaepernick. He took the 49ers to the Superbowl in 2012. Quarterbacks, like politicians, own results. Now “his” team is 1-and-4. Pressure’s on.

Military personnel with flags board a stage before a songstress belts out The Star-Spangled Banner. And then, just as she reaches the glorious crescendo of that super-fine anthem, four Marine Harrier fighter jets roar overhead as fireworks shoot out of the scoreboards. And everyone just about loses their shit. It’s brilliant.

Captains from both sides stride to the middle (there are four per team) to toss the coin, shake hands and man-hug. The mighty fog-horn of The Lusitania goes off again. The teams take their places. The Ravens’ kicker heads to the back of his mark. There’s a build-up of noise as if Apollo’s and Starbuck’s personal rocket ships are about to be shot out of Battlestar Galactica. And then everyone is yelling. And it’s everything you can do not to run about in the media centre and crash tackle someone. The joint is ready to rumble.

And from there it’s like a really long, meandering movie with a lot of earnest talking bits – Doctor Zhivago, say, or Ben-Hur, with a lot of talking and serious bits – punctuated by super-exciting spikes of top action and fighting, with Bond villains and ninjas and many Forrest Gumps.

The arms on both quarterbacks, the power and accuracy of their throwing, the timing of it, to hit a man running up field, to time the throw thus, it’s great stuff. And all in the face of rushing, dangerous men the size of the unholy demon spawn of Will Skelton and Wolverine.

Yet because of the dictates of the Television God which makes this whole deal such a big one, the game is stretched out longer than a Home And Away marathon. There is standing about, swapping teams, timeouts, ad breaks, injuries, and stops for no reason you can discern.

Yet like Test match cricket (which Americans do not get at all), there’s an art to watching American football. Just as in cricket you wouldn’t watch every second across six hours of play, in American football you focus on the action when it’s happening. When it’s not, you focus on your mate, your wife, your phone, the cheer girls, the flag boys, the comedic stylings of Sourdough Sam. Or whatever you like.

And so Kaepernick and the master puppet-master and coach Jim Tomsula try much jiggy-pokery, moving their human chess pieces around with short passes into midriffs and direct running up guts. There are passes tossed wider and on various tangents. The Niners advance with a series of first downs, mainly via the bullocking runs of go-to grunt man Carlos Hyde. The giant Vance McDonald takes a pass and is bounced into touch acrobatically and brutally. Vernon Davis runs fast and steppy. But the Ravens’ defence holds and the Niners punt.

The Ravens can’t make significant yards either. And that means they will punt. And that means ... Hayne Plane time. And the buttocks of the one Australian in the press box inch a little closer to the glass. And we see this happen: Hayne waits under the high ball, catches it cleanly on his chest, and steps a marauding phalanx of rushing Ravens. He finds a little space, steps again, and again! “Go, son!” I urge. He’s beaten four! He’s just about to shoot out that cattle prod of a fend and find only the punter – a man with as much chance of tackling Hayne as a six-foot cream puff – between him and the ever-lastin’ glory of the end zone, when the dream is over. In a split-second, a defender, unsighted by Hayne, makes a diving play on Hayne and his ball-carrying arm. The ball is jolted free. It bobbles about and what looks like six giant Ravens leap on the ball all at once, a massive scrum like a baseball fight. There is squabbling and scrapping. Somehow it comes up 49ers ball. Hayne’s helmeted head jolts as he swears, filthy. And this is effectively his only dinkum involvement-in-anger the whole game.

Players stream on and off. Phil Dawson, a 40-year-old kicker from Dallas, who is paid $US3 million per year for this one singular task, lands a three-point field goal from 53 yards. There’s a blast on the fog-horn. Flag men run on the field, drum guys get jiggy. Players come on and off again. And the Niners turn to kick-off man, Bradley Pinion, a 21-year-old rookie who signed a contract worth $US2.5 million to kick-off, punt and hold the snaps for Dawson’s goals. He kicks off. And away we go.

Kaepernick got the 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2013 (when they lost by three points to these very Ravens) but hasn’t enjoyed a white-hot start to the season. Unable to find or trust his men up field, he’s done a lot of running. But today, the man is on. His throws are long and powerful and timed perfectly. They hit running men far upfield who need to just look over their shoulders in the knowledge that it’s coming.

Flags fly in for illegalities, yellow hankies from space. Referees touch their Batman utility belts and tell the crowd what the penalty is for. It’s hard to know how they can pick out indiscretions among the maelstrom of the scrimmage. But they do, penalising teams five, ten or 15 yards.

Niners kick off. I see two giant Ravens join hands and tear up field in front of their kick-off return man, Jeremy Ross. They’re double-teaming – world-championship-wrestling-style – whoever wants to tackle their man. They take out one defender who goes down, coat-hangered by two mobile angry bouncers.

“Oh!” I cry, as Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco throws a beautiful, hard, spiralling bullet to tight-end Crockett Gilmore, who turns to face the ball, jumps, catches it in the air, is hit low on the calves by a diving defender and rips off a backward somersault like a crash-test dummy shot out the windscreen of a Mazda 3. First down. Great stuff.

An air raid siren goes off and the crowd roars “De-FENCE”. Third down and four to get. Crowd getting super-jiggy. There are flags. Umpire explains things I don’t catch. And we’ll go to a break for a timeout or television or something. And all that build-up is hosed down. Seems a waste.

The Ravens are third and goal which means all-but. The big men butt heads at the line of scrimmage. There are more flags. The umpires have a committee meeting with Ravens head coach John Harbaugh. I don’t know what’s going on. Doesn’t matter. The Ravens can’t score a touchdown so kick for goal and get it.

And then, play of the match. Torrey Smith tears down the right flank pursued by a similarly fast and agile defender. Kaepernick picks him off with a mighty long bomb that hits Smith on the chest before the tall, long-legged and blindingly quick running man burns his pursuer and tears into the end zone. Fantastic play, a 76-yard touchdown. And everyone goes bat-animal.

Some giant humans out here. Andrew Tiller is a Brahman bull on two legs. He plays guard. He’d be good at it. San Fran defensive lineman Glenn Dorsey is wider than the Straits of Hormuz; you couldn’t get around him with a map and three days’ water. As well, their linebacker NaVorro Bowman is more giant Wolverine than man, a fearsome creature, a fan favourite.

After half-time (and entertainment which consists of sky-divers raining from the sky) there’s a decibel meter thing on the big screen that challenges fans to “make some noise”. Which they do, a lot. It’s annoying at footy games in Australia, to have a rev-up guy telling people when to cheer. But here’s it’s embraced; part of Game Day.

Cool names out here. There’s Nordly Capi, Lardarius Webb, Wesley De’Ondre, Jaquiski Tartt, Shayne Skov and Tank Carradine. None so cool, for mine, however, as the Cleveland Browns’ linebacker, Barkevious Mingo. How about that for a handle?

The teams trade touchdowns until the Ravens sneak to within five points. There’s another two-minute warning and the drumming people get jiggy in the end zone and great gussets of fire shoot out of peoples’ mouths, to celebrate and acknowledge that there is two minutes left in this fixture.

Ravens drive upfield, their final chance. Big screen commands people to “YELL” and plenty do. Flacco continues to hit men up field, and the Ravens carve their way towards the honeypot. With 13 seconds left Flacco stops the clock by dropping the ball between his legs. There are flags, a five-yard penalty against the Niners. Flacco nearly finds a leaping Kamar Aiken but the wide receiver can’t get both feet down in play. Six seconds left. Ball is snapped. Giants butt heads. The end zone is full of men running different ways at speed. And Flacco hurls the pill into the mix ... but can’t find one of his own. Ball down. Pass incomplete.

And there it is. The fog-horn signals full-time and San Francisco 49ers (25) defeat Baltimore Ravens (20). And there you go. The denouement of a big, brutal, exciting game of American football. It might have run longer than Dr Zhivago II: Still Cold In Russia, but with an Aussie in it, it’s more fun than a space monkey drinking beer on a beach.