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Campbelltown crowd figure is a blight on the Tigers, not their fans

14th April, 2014
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James Tedesco will line up in blue. (Digital Image by Robb Cox © nrlphotos.com)
Expert
14th April, 2014
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The writing was on the wall for Campbelltown Stadium long before the Wests Tigers took the field against the North Queensland Cowboys on Saturday night.

A disappointing crowd of just 6456 turned up for the match, guaranteeing one of rugby league’s great anomalies would continue to grab headlines. A week earlier a tick over 16,000 supporters braved the treacherous Sydney weather to see the Tigers upset the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles at the prehistoric Leichhardt Oval.

Leading into the Round 6 showdown with North Queensland, the Tigers’ social media team promoted the match with the #2560 hashtag, Campbelltown’s postcode, and urged fans in the Macarthur region to try and topple the Leichhardt crowd from Round 5.

The 2560 promotion was replaced with the fans’ very own four digit boycott. That’s 6456 fans at an NRL match in Sydney’s rugby league heartland against a team that boasts Johnathan Thurston, James Tamou, Matt Scott and Brent Tate.

“Crowds are always going to vary no matter where you are,” Paul Lake, Deputy Mayor of Campbelltown, said to The Roar. “Last season they got 7000 to a game at Leichhardt against the Cowboys and a few weeks later they only got 5000 when they played Melbourne.

“The interstate sides are never going to attract a lot of away fans, so it’s probably a little childish from them to make statements like they’re going to take games away from Campbelltown if the fans don’t show up. I guess you can take what they said as a threat.

“Perhaps the promotion of the game was an issue and something senior management has to look at. I didn’t see much promotion of the match apart from a sign outside the ground on Pembroke Road.”

Instead of officials blaming the fans, they should be having a good hard look at the factors leading to a crowd figure akin to those of the Western Suburbs Magpies of the late 1990s.

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This may sound odd, but crowds at Leichhardt Oval and Campbelltown shouldn’t be compared. You can hear the Balmain faction arguing the point all the way from Norton Street – that crowds speak for themselves, and Leichhardt Oval is always packed rain, hail or shine.

The truth is those Leichhardt crowds are made up of a completely different set of fans that didn’t show up at Campbelltown on Saturday night. A handful of games annually at the old venue will always pull a crowd. Leichhardt Oval sells itself, the Tigers know it, and they most definitely know they don’t have to promote games played there.

It’s a perfect fit in the current climate, but the club couldn’t sustain itself at Leichhardt in the long-term. Take away the nostalgia of the ground and all you have is an eroding suburban dinosaur slowly being consumed by its surroundings.

Then there is Campbelltown Stadium, which is apparently the heartbeat of the Wests Tigers in Sydney’s expanding south-west. It’s a large rugby league nursery that will continue to thrive and grow in the coming decade, yet here we are scratching our heads as to why only 6456 witnessed the Tigers live on the weekend.

“Most teams have a home base to work from but not the Tigers, they’re all over the place,” Deputy Mayor Lake said. “They should have sat down and worked out a realistic business plan back in 2000. Now after fifteen years they still don’t have a permanent base.

“The team should be out here but I suppose I’m a little biased. The fact is though Campbelltown, Camden and Wollondilly are the real growth areas in population. There will be half a million people living here in the next 10 years, and a million people 50 years from now.

“The arrangement with the Tigers is different every year. They proposed what they wanted and got exactly what they wanted on their terms. If they came to us and said they wanted to set up at Campbelltown Stadium as their home base we would more than happy to talk about that. But nobody has ever come to us and said they were coming.”

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Rookie sensations James Tedesco and David Nofoaluma are the future of the club, and both are local juniors straight out of the area. You can add Jarryd Hayne, Israel Folau and Ryan Hoffman, who have all gone on to become superstars of the game.

Junior talent alone will ensure the Tigers don’t turn their back on Macarthur, and if they ever did they’d be committing one of the great sporting suicides. They surely couldn’t expect to keep the production line pumping if they decided to take those four games away from Campbelltown Stadium.

But the Tigers can’t have their cake and eat it too.

When you think Parramatta you think the Eels and you immediately link Penrith with the Panthers. But try and explain to a rugby league novice what the relationship between Macarthur and the Tigers is without having to take a breath.

Wests first moved home games away from Campbelltown in 2005, triggering the ailing relationship between the club and the most important cog of their supporter base. Any good work they had done in their first years as a joint venture was stopped in its tracks.

Taking the guaranteed money and playing at quarter-full stadiums was and still is a short-term fix, and now we are seeing the results. Macarthur fans are now voting with their feet and refusing to budge.

It must be an odd feeling for passionate fans in the south-west who follow a side based in Concord, that play home games in Sydney’s inner west and have players publicly spruiking their love for Leichhardt Oval.

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AFL and rugby aren’t a threat to the Tigers or the NRL in Macarthur. The Wests Tigers are all alone in one of the most vibrant sporting areas in the country, yet they won’t use it accordingly.

Officials from the club will tell you they have always cared about the Macarthur. But part-time work isn’t the same as full-time work.

The 6456 figure isn’t a blight on the fans – it’s a blight on the club.

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