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The games and the dates have been finalised for the final round of Asian FIFA World Cup qualification. The next and important step is to find somewhere to play the games.
Because two of the home games are scheduled to be played in Sydney and Melbourne in the middle of June ’09, it requires some detailed planning and cooperation with the other major sporting codes.
Public perception is everything for maintaining the momentum of big corporations, including the NRL and the ARL.
In the bad old days when football was a bit of a laughing stock, the general public might have scoffed at such a request.
But with the growing stature of football and the growing Socceroos brand name (breakfast cereals, shopping centre appearances), not being helpful to our national football team may be seen as a PR negative.
Being part of an NRL or AFL dominated city can mean that you are offending people who don’t follow your game, without really knowing it.
“So what?”, you say, this comes with being the biggest in town.
The AFL and NRL are spending big in the fight over their sporting turf in Sydney. At this point in time the AFL are looking more like the bad guys and seen by many to be trying to take over Sydneysiders’ way of life.
The AFL are making lots of noise about a second Sydney team, are spending big on converting junior players, approaching councils to convert to AFL grounds, are looking to buy ANZ Stadium to make it Sydney’s AFL home ground, and have committed 150 million to “accelerating the growth of AFL in NSW and Queensland”.
These are the sorts of things you do to accelerate growth.
But these are also the sorts of things that are offending a lot of Sydneysiders, for whom AFL is not their first chosen sport.
Despite the AFL and NRL’s efforts, match attendances in Sydney, TV ratings and memberships for their codes are falling.
Examples of this include the first State of Origin game, the NRL ANZ home games, the Swans ‘blockbusters’ at ANZ, and Swans memberships; all down on last year.
Are Sydney people sick of AFL and NRL, or just their public fighting?
It didn’t help when Barry Brownless (former AFL player) on Sixty Minutes called rugby league people “Brainless Gorillas”.
At the grassroots level in my area, some people obviously aren’t happy either.
The AFL posts from a nearby AFL field have been stolen by ‘hooligans’ and dumped in the local bush three times.
The local council has had to revert to hiring security guards to patrol the oval and protect those eight tall sticks (paid for by the AFL club).
Maybe a good bit of public relations for the NRL and AFL might be to stop the muscle flexing and brawling. Be the good guys and publicly be seen to be helping some of the other codes.
They might be surprised; it could grow their PR stocks and actually do them more good than harm.
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