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With no disrespect to the ANZAC Test players, there are two matches from rugby league’s standalone representative weekend just gone that are bound to dominate fan discussion this week, both for entirely different reasons.
Firstly there is the Saturday night’s Tonga vs. Samoa match, a game that even had the most bitter international rugby league cynic crying grand final winning tears of joy at the purity of the rugby league experience they had just witnessed.
And then there is yesterday’s City Country match, the bloated and dried up carcass of a once great football contest that officials continue to prop up with sticks to fool us kids into thinking it’s still alive.
One was awful. One was awesome. And here is what the former needs to learn from the latter.
Crowds
If you didn’t actually watch the matches you’d be led to believe that the Test match at Penrith should have been moved to Homebush and that City Country was watched by two blokes and a Golden Retriever.
Both are exaggerations of course, with Penrith attracting 10k and Coffs Harbour 4K, but the Test and City Country crowd should have been a hell of a lot closer than they were.
Tickets to the international were priced with an emphasis of getting bums on seats, I recall a flyer for $15 tickets, whilst City Country was accused of gouging patrons stinging them $60 for a grandstand seat.
Sure people who can’t go to an NRL match every week are usually willing to shell out the cash, but considering you could see a game of local Northern NSW footy yesterday for $5 you can only milk the starving footy fan so much.
Passion
When you compare the beige vs. off-white half-hearted arguments about City Country passion with the blood-curdling cries of the two pacific war dances from Saturday night then it’s pretty clear who delivered in the passion stakes this weekend gone.
And, as science shows, passion + rugby league = good.
The ridiculous thing is country rugby league is full of passion. Go to a Stanthorpe Gremlins or Woolgoolga Sea Horses match and the players will be going around like their families lives rest on the outcome.
Put them up against a few yuppies from the big smoke and it should be electric!
Even in the 90s watching John Simon go around in his maroon MMI jersey at Steeler Stadium there was some country underdog animosity about the match, but it’s gone baby gone.
Maybe they need to give the teams ridiculous local nicknames, or a breakdance vs boot scooting pre-match face off, I’m not really sure.
But geez I’d love to see a City Country match get stormed in the last 30 seconds of play out of sheer exuberance.
Players
Fair cop to the players who turned up for City Country, they did their job and the game wasn’t atrocious by any means.
But how many players do you think pulled out of Tonga vs. Samoa? And how many looked like they had anything left in the tank at full time?
The players in the international, be they NRL star, Under 20s player or NSW cup smokie, went berserk from the moment a ball was kicked and if the RLIF hadn’t banned the shoulder charge it would have registered on the richter scale.
There’s a good chance they were getting paid jack for the match too, but to see their devotion to the cause was magnificent.
Coverage
The Tonga vs. Samoa match, despite being played by two ‘minnows’, was shown live on Fox Sports and included excellent commentary by Matt Russell.
No references to the ninth hole at some expensive golf course you’ll never play, no reality TV show plugs and no uncomfortable racist elderly uncle jokes about hard to pronounce surnames.
The City Country match? Even the actual commentators pulled out of the match citing a dodgy hammy with third stringer Tim Gilbert chucked the hospital pass to work the mic. And of course it was delayed.
I went to a country rugby league match (who can resist Matt Peterson going round for the Cudgen Hornets?) and had time to come home and catch the end of the C vs C before drinking four coffees to get through the replay.
No one respects delayed sport anymore, it’s the modern equivalent of finding yesterday’s newspaper on the train that someone has already done the Sudoku puzzle in and trying to be entertained.
You want a fixture to be respected by the public? Then have the broadcasters respect it first.
The Point
At the heart of every professional rugby league match there needs to be a point.
There are very few sane individuals in this world who get up and think “Hmm, might run full pelt into a bunch of tattooed behemoths today.”
Maybe it’s competition points. Maybe it’s national pride. Maybe it’s just a whopping big cheque.
Whatever the case players need incentives, and City Country has lost its point.
The fixture took a big leap into the crapper when NSW selected players were left out, and now with Test players left out it’s still bad.
Players know it’s not a Blues trial, as players in the past have had blinders and never gotten a sniff.
Perhaps the best thing going for the future of City Country then is the knowledge that international matches, like Tonga vs. Samoa, were not long ago the butt of many a joke.
Maybe it’s time we asked them for a hand?
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