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While watching the Sea Eagles and Raiders run around an Australian Rules football field in far-flung Albury on Easter Saturday, the word atop the roundabout that spins on endless loop in my brain was “Why?”
Why take an NRL game to a rural locale on a long weekend when many of its residents would be camping, beaching, or otherwise enjoying themselves?
Why play the game between Manly and Canberra when Albury’s coordinates would suggest Melbourne and Canberra would be a more attractive match-up for its citizens?
And why – oh, Ricky, please tell us why – are the Raiders only capable of turning in a performance like that once a month?
A team of experts from the AIS, MI6 and NASA are currently several trillion dollars of taxpayer money deep into a study on the latter, having decided the first two puzzles are too perplexing for their brightest brains to solve.
To the independent observer, Manly’s Albury experiment – for it was a ‘home’ game for the team whose supporters allegedly fear dropping off the edge of the planet if they cross the Spit Bridge – seemed ill-conceived and well short of the lead-time required to make it a success.
With just a touch over 6000 hardy souls and a few stray dogs in attendance, the end result was far from a PR bonanza.
But wait, there’s more to add to the NRL’s Easter weekend horror show (while acknowledging that the Good Friday/Easter Monday Olympic Stadium blockbusters are outstanding initiatives), including:
We know the answer to the “Why?” of the first three is “television”, while it seems Roosters fans would much rather be at the beach when there are day games on, at The Bucket List at twilight, the Cross at night, inside if it’s raining, or watching the Swans/Waratahs/Sydney FC if the tri-colours are stinking it up. Which, damn their cocky struts to hell, hasn’t been a viable excuse for a while now.
(And for those Roosters fans thinking a Raiders fan has no place calling kettles black when it comes to attendances, I’ll just say you haven’t lived until you’ve done a seven-hour round trip to Canberra to watch your team capitulate 24-20 against a Dragons team who could barely string two passes together. And with that still fresh in your memory, you’ll find many more fulfilling ways to waste half a Saturday.)
Anyway, this isn’t a game of ‘my team’s fan-base is more passionate than yours’, but a plea for common sense scheduling at NRL HQ.
Here are a few ideas worth throwing into the Season Draw generating algorithm.
And on the topic of feuds, let’s front-load the first week of the competition with no-brainer rivalries. Bunnies-Chooks. Broncos-Cowboys. Raiders-Dragons. Storm-Warriors. Dogs-Eels. Knights-Manly. Panthers-Tigers (aka the LOLcat derby). Titans-Sharks, because this scheduling business is an imperfect science.
The only thing as certain in life as death and taxes is media attack dogs being ready to strike if ‘crowds are down’ early in the season, so why wouldn’t you enter the annual measuring contest with your flag flying at full mast?
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