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Opinion

Magic Round? What's the point?

Roar Rookie
13th May, 2021
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Roar Rookie
13th May, 2021
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So apparently I should be excited it’s Magic Round.

Just like in 2019 my team is playing a ‘home’ game in Brisbane this weekend, as are I think about five other teams who did so in 2019. How does that happen? Is that the magic?

Fans of those teams see an opportunity to attend a home game disappear? Is it the absence of home ground advantage for those ‘home’ teams that’s magical? Is it the rubbery way the NRL gets to allocate one attendance across multiple ‘home’ teams?

Like so many rugby league innovations (I use the term loosely) Magic Round is not an original idea. Just like cheerleaders at Australian Baseball League games, you can see someone noticed Super League have a Magic Weekend and said “I have an idea!”. The Super League has had Magic Weekend since 2007, but where Super League moves it around in an effort to showcase their game – Cardiff, Edinburgh, Manchester and Newcastle, the NRL plonks it in Brisbane and asks “how good is footy?”

Exactly how does Magic Round enhance my experience of the NRL? How does it grow the game? It looks and feels like a junior carnival to me and I expect a little more of a professional football league, though it does sit well with a league that still has grass hills at so-called stadiums.

Tino Fa'asuamaleaui

(Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)

It can’t be held in an effort to increase attendances over the given weekend. In 2019 an average of 16,834 was allocated to each home team of Magic Round, a figure that was beaten in four other rounds that season without having all games in the one city.

But if we have to have Magic Round, I would have thought the natural choice of venue is Sydney anyway, seeing it is the spiritual home of rugby league. Why is it not Sydney? If you want to energise the fan base and ignite historical rivalries surely the heartland is where you do it?

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