By Ed Jackson
October 30th 2009 @ 1:33am
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Rees promises fight over NRL grand final
NSW premier Nathan Rees has promised Queensland counterpart Anna Bligh a “fight to the death” over the hosting rights to the NRL grand final.
Bligh said on Wednesday she was “playing hard” to secure the game’s showpiece after the NRL’s deal with the NSW government expires in 2012.
The Queensland government would reportedly pay up to six times more than the $500,000 NSW currently gives the NRL to host the grand final.
And NRL chief executive David Gallop says the league would be derelict in its duty if it didn’t consider bids from Brisbane and Melbourne.
But Rees says any decision to move the grand final from rugby league’s “spiritual home” in Sydney would be ludicrous.
“My position on this is crystal clear. If Bligh thinks that she’ll have a fight, she certainly will have a fight, we’ll fight to the death on this issue,” Rees told Triple M radio’s Grill Team in Sydney on Thursday.
“Ultimately it would be a kick in the teeth for the people of NSW should David Gallop and the NRL decide to have a grand final anywhere but Sydney.
“This is the spiritual home of rugby league and the grand finals that we’ve seen here in recent years have been absolutely extraordinary.
“You’ve seen the community spirit that got behind the Parramatta Eels this year, regardless of whether people were Parramatta supporters or not so any notion that it should go to another state, I think is lunacy particularly when the NRL says they are concerned about the AFL incursion into Western Sydney. It plays straight into the AFL’s hands.”
And while admitting he faces a battle with Queensland, any possibility of Melbourne being seriously considered as a grand final venue was dismissed by Rees, who labelled the Victorian capital a “provincial town”.
“They can send it to Melbourne and have 20,000 people in a stadium down there in what is basically a large provincial town or they can have it in Sydney, the gateway to Australia,” Rees said.
“I think this is absolute lunacy by the NRL and it’s a kick in the teeth for all the people in NSW who have supported rugby league over the last century.
“Any notion that the rugby league grand final leaves its home of NSW, I think is just a recipe for disaster for the NRL, they ought to come to their senses and come to their senses quickly.”
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