More on NRL finals: how to make everyone look bad

First of all, a caveat: this post is based on information originally printed by the Murdoch papers. It contains direct quotes so I will on this occasion allow the possibility that it isn’t completely made up – but I would advise also bearing in mind that it still could be.

The latest backsliding nonsense to come from the NRL on the week one finals embarrassment of fewer than 14,000 turning up for Manly v North Queensland at the SFS is a classic piece of twisted logic. David “Glue Factory” Gallop now apparently believes that the only reason why hardly anyone bothered to go to the game was nothing other than its slightly inconvenient kick-off time.

“The 8.30pm kick-off wasn’t ideal and we will explore all options in relation to that with the clubs and broadcaster,” one gutter rag has Glue Factory saying. “The timeslot isn’t one our fans are used to. It is quite late. However it did produce record ratings so we need to find a balanced approach.”

The slander sheet in question claims the solution Glue Factory will propose for this theoretical problem is playing the two Saturday round one finals at 4pm and 6.30pm instead of 6.30pm and 8.30pm. This avoids the late finish while still allowing Channel 9 to fit in its scheduled Harvey Norman commercial, sorry, ‘news bulletin’ at 6pm.

This is ass-backwardsness of the highest order. It appears to rest on the principle that the reason no more than 14,000 Manly fans went to the Cowboys game is nothing other than that it had a late kick off. The counterargument is that it was in fact the combination of the late kick off with the fact it was played two hours on public transport away from the home club’s fan base that caused the problem.

You have to give Glue Factory credit for realising that if you move a team’s home game miles away from where most of its fans live attendance is likely to suffer (though it’s a shame he had to watch a finals game played in front a less than third full stadium to twig). However, where many of us might try to solve that issue by thinking “maybe it’s a bad idea to move the game in the first place”, Glue Factory has decided to twist himself in knots by concluding that moving the game would have been fine, provided fans were given enough opportunity to make the epic round trip to and from.

One thing worth noting here: if it was just about the kick-off time, why not just play the Manly game in the 6.30pm slot and the Brisbane v Warriors one at 8.30pm? It would have meant a late kick off for Warriors fans watching in New Zealand but, let’s face it, New Zealand TV audiences are about 500th on the list of NRL priorities at this point. And the Kiwis had rugby world cup games on earlier anyway – a late game would have had less competition for ratings.

In addition, I’m really struggling to believe that simply moving the Manly game to 4pm would have radically improved the crowd anyway. If it’s just about attendance, to justify moving the match to the SFS the minimum crowd required would be about 25,000 – in other words, comfortably above the capacity at Brookvale. Would 11,000 extra fans have showed up to an earlier kick off? We’ll never know, but personally I am doubtful in the extreme. And that’s not to mention the fact that 25,000 at the SFS still means a half-empty ground appearing on TV.

Once again the whole issue seems to come down to the ‘suitability’ of suburban grounds for finals football. This year has shown without doubt that crowd numbers do not always demand a move to larger capacity stadia: the Tigers v Dragons game could easily have been played at the SFS while Manly v North Queensland wouldn’t even have sold out Brookvale. Yet apparently both games had to move simply because the NRL couldn’t countenance letting Manly play at their home ground.

Here’s my question: what’s so special about finals games that suburban grounds – that are perfectly acceptable during the regular season – suddenly can’t be allowed to host them?

At Tigers v Melbourne earlier this year there were 20,000 in at Leichhardt Oval; it was bursting at the seams but coped. The same was true of Brookvale for the infamous Manly v Melbourne game. What changes in finals? Are fans going to have a hissy fit because there’s a bit of a queue to get in and it takes a couple of extra minutes to buy a beer? If so, who cares? Are we there to watch a game of league or to have a nice picnic?

Here’s my theory: it’s to do with corporate boxes and the media. It’s ok to cram 20,000 in to Brookvale or Leichhardt during the season because it’s just mug punters who’ll turn up anyway, but as soon as media and corporate interest spikes up – in other words the kind of people who wouldn’t be seen dead at Tigers v Newcastle on a cold Monday night in July but don’t mind showing up at the business end of the season – suddenly there need to be ‘modern facilities’ and ample parking.