The game at Bathurst was a great showcase for the NRL. It featured a good crowd (remembering country grounds don’t cater for your 10,000 crowd numbers) with people travelling from way out of town to attend.
Should this be repeated each year? I’d answer with a very loud and emphatic yes.
The clubs and NRL do show a certain amount of disdain to country areas in throwing them a few crumbs like trial games. The City versus Country game is played in rural areas but, as it is solely made up of country and city State of Origin players, no players in country NSW are involved.
If any game is to go from the football calendar it will most likely be this one.
What we need from the NRL is to have them allocate country areas to each club. They can foster the area and play at least one competition game a season (two would be better) there.
After all, clubs do cherry pick the best of the young players in rural areas. This would be a form of appreciation shown by the clubs. The clubs would also be expected to provide coaching clinics for the kids.
We keep hearing from all and sundry that the NRL wants to promote the grassroots of the game – here is a way to do so on a regular basis, not an ad hoc one that has existed in the past.
Allocating country areas to the clubs wouldn’t be hard. St George Illawarra could look after Illawarra, South Coast and Southern Highlands, Penrith the Central West Region, Newcastle the Hunter and Central Coast.
The Storm would have the most difficult area as there would be few rugby fields in rural Victoria, but with only three NRL teams in Queensland, the Storm could be allocated an area there.
As an incentive, the allocated club would be allowed first choice pick of any youngsters in the area they look after. This did work for the old VFL before it became a national competition, with South Melbourne looking after parts of the southern Riverina and Essendon in part the northern Riverina (home of the Daniher brothers).
Another benefit would be that up-and-coming stars would be fast tracked into rugby league and not tempted to drift into AFL or rugby union.
Renegade
Guest
You might want to check your figure for the manly-tigers game.... pretty sure it was 13k.
Arnold kerwanty
Guest
Bush footy? By all means! Let's not mention the fact that the local shire council that Bathurst is in had to fork out $200k a season for these games to be played there. Nrl have no idea how to promote the game, or supports its clubs and supporters alike. Quant as challenge was memorable, but I doubt if well ever see it again. Nrl clubs reluctant even to okay trials in the bush these days.
Glenn Innes
Guest
I am not so sure there is any great benefit to the sport taking NRL games to small towns like Bathurst and drawing smaller crowds than you would get in Sydney,I mean could you imagine the NFL taking a regular season game to some flea bitten joint in say Wyoming, never happen in a million years so why should the NRL do it.?.Take pre season trials out there but not regular season games.
turbodewd
Guest
I would visit the country sparingly.
The Hoff
Guest
How the heck can you get rid of Brooky oval on crowd figures ?? Manly played tigers friday night recently and got 17k. Parra played Souths ( the pride of the league ) recently on a friday night and got 16k?? Thats 2 of the most supported clubs ! The weather and time/day of fixture has a massive influence. Upgrade Brooky to 25k and we will sell it out if its a sunday arvo with good weather. You can count the number of games in NRL that generate more than 25k on one hand a season.
Stolzy
Guest
absolutely agree about the next tv deal....wouldnt surprise me to see the NRL at least look into the possibility of doing a WWE/NFL/MLB and creating NRL network and then onsell possibly to foxtel and Nine......they will be able to do this now cause of the bitter pill they had to take in this current deal
Cadfael
Roar Guru
I did say only one a year surely that isn't too much to help propagate the game.
Crosscoder
Roar Guru
It's a hard one. Promotion is what the code should be doing a lot more of. And yes regional areas are but onbe of these ways to do it. The trouble is you go to a Bathurst ,a Mudgee,etc great for the locals,but when we get back to the nitty gritty of crowd averages,8,880 at Bathurst does not help. The averages mentioned re Cronulla,and Manly are affected somewhat by Monday night football games.BTW Sydney roosters last years premiers with the SFS behind them ave 12,930 so far.. I believe expanding the game by another two teams,will provide the opportunity for more sunday afternoon games and perhaps a tad more flexibility in scheduling.The next Tv deal I believe will be more fan user friendly,and it will bleeding well need to be.
Stolzy
Guest
i think it needs to be encouraged but it needs to be done in the right way and not just for the sake of it for example, when the bulldogs were flying and took a game up to Mackay...that was a great day with a good crowd..... i dont think teams should be forced to do this, and i dont think it should always be a NRL game, could also be trial games which alot of teams do. the game in bathurst got almost 10k people.....you mention Brookie and Cronulla, their season averages this year (with teams running direct opposite mind you, one going to get the minor premiership, one the wooden spoon) are 11837 for Manly from 8 games....and 12528 for Cronulla from 10 games.... so what does that really say about the so called manly faithful that we have to keep games at brookevale, their team is on the top of the table and the team running last has a better average crowd by almost 1000 people....
TriangleFlatDog
Guest
There was a buzz around Bathurst last week when the Panthers were in town. They did plenty in the community especially with the school kids, was great to see. Folks here already talking about next year
The Hoff
Guest
Yeah great idea ... take games away from Brooky , Leichardt and cronulla and take em to the country where real passionate supporters who have been going to games each week can attend