Why Brisbane should host this year's NRL grand final

With the COVID-19 situation in Sydney showing no signs of improving in the short term, and while the NRL grand final is still three months away, one stadium may have to come to the NRL’s rescue to ensure this year’s grand final can be played in front of a reasonable crowd.

The ongoing Bondi cluster, which has since spread to various corners of greater Sydney, has ballooned out to more than 300 cases and forced Australia’s most populous city into a lockdown that has been extended until at least midnight on Saturday, 17 July.

This has caused serious ramifications for Australian sport, with AFL clubs Sydney Swans and GWS Giants and Super Netball teams NSW Swifts and Giants all being forced into hubs in Victoria.

That state has now gone virus-free for one week after a brief outbreak saw Melbourne locked down for two weeks last month.

Meanwhile, all NRL clubs in Sydney plus the Central Coast-based New Zealand Warriors have been placed under the same level of restrictions they lived under last year as the league attempts to navigate its way around the latest COVID-19 outbreak.

Same-day travel has returned to the agenda, with the Sharks travelling to and from Brisbane for their match against the Broncos last Sunday, and the Cowboys are set to do the same when they face the Rabbitohs in Newcastle on Friday night.

It has been announced that the third State of Origin match will be played at McDonald Jones Stadium in Newcastle, as the extension of Sydney’s current lockdown made it logistically impossible for the match to be played in a COVID-safe way at Stadium Australia.

Residents in the locked-down areas will be prohibited from attending, and a crowd limit of 50 per cent will be in place to comply with NSW government guidelines. This means that a maximum of 16,500 local fans will be permitted to attend of the ground’s capacity of 33,000.

But that might not be it – should the situation in Sydney continue to deteriorate the same way it did in Victoria last year, Queensland may have to come to the rescue and host this year’s NRL grand final at Suncorp Stadium.

(Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)

For the most part the Sunshine State has been able to keep its outbreaks under control, which was key to the AFL, Supercars and Super Netball shifting its operations north last year.

It became the first state to allow full capacity crowds to return to major sporting events, including last year’s third Origin match, at which nearly 50,000 mostly Maroons supporters saw their side, dubbed “the worst side in Origin history”, win the series against New South Wales.

Last year we saw Queensland become the new home of most sports. At one stage it was home to all but three AFL clubs, the exceptions being the two South Australian clubs and Hawthorn, while it hosted nearly the entire netball season.

It hosted the netball decider, which was won by Melbourne Vixens over West Coast Fever, while a week later a crowd of just under 30,000 saw Richmond win its 13th AFL flag at the expense of the Geelong Cats in the first-ever AFL grand final under lights at the Gabba.

The AFL decider proved to be a massive success for the city, with footy-starved fans in Melbourne going as far as escaping their lockdown and then spending a fortnight in quarantine in Darwin before ultimately making it to the sunshine capital.

While there were no formal festivities, such as the grand final ticker-tape parade last year, the Queensland government promoted the game with a range of events in the capital as well as a statewide tour of the premiership cup.

This year’s decider will be returned to the MCG unless another major coronavirus outbreak in Victoria forces the showpiece match to be shifted away from the state once again.

Also last year, when the COVID-19 situation in the southern state spiralled out of control, Melbourne Storm were forced into a Sunshine Coast hub, where they remained based until they won the NRL premiership, by which point they’d been away from home for four months.

Given the sunshine state’s track record of being able to keep the sporting calendar alive against all odds in 2020, there is no reason why Suncorp Stadium cannot host this year’s NRL grand final should the situation in Sydney not improve by September or October.

In fact there was talk of the venue hosting last year’s decider, an idea that became music to the ears of former Maroons coach Mal Meninga.

“Hallelujah. When you talk about sheer crowd, audiences and things … 56,000 at Suncorp would go off, it would go off,” he said at the time.

Ultimately the cancellation of the redevelopment of Stadium Australia saw the decider returned to the Olympic stadium in Sydney after the SCG had been earmarked to host the showpiece match.

Prior to that, in September 2015, then NSW Premier Mike Baird was attempting to secure the decider for his state for up to two decades, which earnt the ire of his Queensland counterpart, Annastacia Palaszczuk.

“Let me make it very clear to Mike Baird, the ‘N’ in NRL stands for national, not Sydney,” Palaszczuk said at the time. “We want to make sure that Queensland gets our fair share.

“Think about it, there could almost be the situation this year when we have the Cowboys and the Broncos in the grand final, so watch this space Mike Baird and we’re coming down there to take the NRL off you.”

Much to Baird’s embarrassment and Palaszczuk’s joy, the Cowboys and Broncos contested the first all-Queensland NRL decider in history, which only saw the momentum grow in Brisbane’s ultimately failed bid to host the decider on an annual basis.

This came at a time when the then-Baird government proposed that Stadium Australia would either undergo a significant redevelopment or be knocked down and rebuilt until it was canned last year by the Berejilkian government, which shifted its focus towards tackling COVID-19.

Then Broncos coach Wayne Bennett was against the idea though, saying that he wasn’t entertained by the thought of a Brisbane grand final and urging stakeholders not to alter tradition.

(Photo by Albert Perez/Getty Images)

Back on topic, and if Suncorp were to host this year’s grand final, it would rake in millions, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars into the Queensland economy, even if fans from New South Wales are locked out of the Sunshine State, as they were for most of last year, and therefore banned from attending.

Not only that, but Brisbane would also be treated to the NRL Women’s grand final, which has always been played at Stadium Australia since the league’s inception in 2018.

Similar to last year’s AFL grand final, there would also be a series of footy-related events leading up to the game, while the traditional grand final breakfast would still proceed either in Brisbane or as a televised virtual event.

A major challenge for the NRL would be to get the four prospective teams – the two NRLW sides and the two NRL sides – in and out of Brisbane safely for the week under the game’s strict biosecurity protocols.

Alternatively, the entire finals series could be contested in south-east Queensland, with matches split across Brisbane and the Gold Coast and the first and second-week finals matches played under quarantine conditions, though fans would still be allowed to attend with social distancing protocols in place.

This could even mean that the Melbourne Storm may have to play its home finals matches in Brisbane even if travel between Queensland and Victoria remains unrestricted either way.

It would prove to be a bigger weekend in Brisbane than Magic Round, which returned this year after it was cancelled in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and drew more than 25,000 visitors from interstate and $20 million in revenue.

It would not be the first time the city has hosted a top-flight rugby league grand final though.

In 1997 it played host to the only Australian Super League grand final, which saw the Brisbane Broncos defeat the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks by 26-8 in front of 58,912 fans under lights at the since downgraded Queensland Sports and Athletics Centre.

The one-off event was promoted with a street parade and game-night fireworks, something that would never really become a staple in future NRL grand finals.

Around that time, the Broncos had to play out of the ground due to a commercial conflict with one of its major sponsors and that of the Queensland State of Origin team. It wasn’t until 2003, when Suncorp Stadium was fully redeveloped, that the Broncos returned to Milton.

Since returning to Lang Park the club has enjoyed consistently strong crowds and later became prime-time drawcards on Channel Nine.

And while the present-day side are unlikely to win a premiership anytime soon, just to have the NRL grand final played in Brisbane would deliver another massive financial boon for the city expected to be named as the host city for the 2032 Summer Olympics later this month.

It could also give the NRL the chance to win back not just some disenchanted Broncos fans but also those who defected to supporting the AFL’s Brisbane Lions, which in contrast to the Broncos’ on-field demise have enjoyed a resurgence on and off the field in recent years.

These are just some of the reasons why Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium should host the NRL grand final if the coronavirus clusters in Sydney aren’t brought under control by the time 3 October rolls around.

But such a decision may not be forthcoming until at least a month or two before the showpiece match, and it will depend on what the COVID situation in the Harbour City is by then.

So if not Sydney, then why not Brisbane?