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Monday Night football is dead in the water and has to disappear off the rugby league scene. I don’t care how good the viewer ratings are for the TV stations, the bottom line is the fans are not turning up.
It isn’t good enough for the best rugby league players, playing in the best rugby league competition in the world, to be playing in front of virtually no one.
In Round 22’s edition, the Sydney Roosters took on the Gold Coast Titans at Allianz Stadium on albeit a very cold and dreary Sydney Night. But the crowd that actually went to the game was ridiculously low.
In fact just 6,345 people turned up to watch the Roosters take on the Titans and that is far and away not good enough. In fact it’s a downright embarrassment to the game. This game also happened to be the last time the Minichello brothers would face off against each other and for an event like that to happen in front of just 6,345 people is saddening.
Now don’t get me wrong, this game probably wouldn’t have got the biggest of crowds if it was played on a Friday, Saturday or a Sunday but it would have been a heck of a lot more than a tick over 6,000.
Consistently throughout the year Monday Night Football has managed to draw the lowest crowds. Whether the TV networks like it or not, the fans have spoken.
9 out of 20 Monday Night Football games so far this year have had crowds of less than 10,000. A further seven games have had crowds of in between 10,000 and 12,000, while no crowd for Monday Night Football has been greater than 13,000 for the season.
The average crowd for Monday Night Football this season is at a staggeringly low 9,632. That is an average of under a 10,000 crowd to witness rugby league’s finest players.
Where could we move the Monday game to? Currently we have two games on Friday, so that is obviously a no-go zone. I believe two is already one game to many on Fridays.
Saturday has three games. Sometimes a 3pm one, a 5:30pm one and a 7:30pm or sometimes the 3pm game is played at 7:30.
I would consider Saturday being an option to house the extra game. This option would involve having two games at either 5:30 or 7:30 every week and making sure there is a 3pm game every week.
The second option would be to have a third game on a Sunday. This would involve moving the game with a 2pm kick off forward by half an hour to 1:00pm. Then the second game could start at 2:30 or 2:45pm while the third game kicks off at 4:00 or 4:30pm.
These are the best two options no doubt about it for the NRL, and maybe as is done now between the 3pm Saturday game and the second 7:30pm Saturday game the two options could be rotated.
Whatever the NRL decides, Monday Night Football must go.