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2019 Crowd Watch

Silent Knight

First Grade
Messages
8,182
Geez that’s a damn good crowd in Gosford. Such a shame we don’t have a team there whilst so many others can barely attract more than a chook raffle to games.

There would have been a team called the Central Coast Bears. But they got shafted by the NRL because bad weather delayed the construction of their stadium and News Limited at the time was more concerned with seeking revenge against those clubs who remained loyal to the ARL.
 

Timmah

LeagueUnlimited News Editor
Staff member
Messages
100,874
Naaa just get the eels in the top 4 replacing the roosters and or melbourne that would be a really good start.
Canberra could've gotten more with a different opponent perhaps, but Souths-Storm was literally 550-odd short of capacity. Not sure any other club would've attracted all that many more.
 

Stallion

First Grade
Messages
7,467
I think you're missing the point - there was room for literally 500 more people. The argument that changing the away team would've had a material impact on the volume of people is what I'm disputing.

A good case for a consolidation /expansion club namely the Central Coast Bears. It's a win/win waiting to be added to this competition . But unfortunately it does not have the influential support it needs within the game to happen. It's basically a licence to print money with a Leagues club, modern ground on a rail way line and a real shot of regaining lost Bears fans along with cementing the Central Coast as another rugby league heartland area. Juniors are there and more would come with the anticipation of such a club. The local derbies would be immense: Central Coast v Newcastle and Bears v Manly Warringah. So many positives along with the high visibility the code gets when featured at this location on a major train line during game day.
 

Valheru

Coach
Messages
17,506
Naaa just get the eels in the top 4 replacing the roosters and or melbourne that would be a really good start.

That happened in 2017 albeit not at the expense of either of the other two teams and the roosters had a better average than Parra that season... as they did in 2018 and as they do so far this season playing at the SCG of all places.
 

yakstorm

First Grade
Messages
5,292
I think people are getting a bit carried away with the Gosford crowd. Now there is no doubt it is a great crowd, and one that I don't think South's would have got at ANZ based upon their crowds in general this year (and the fact ANZ is really really on the nose with RL fans in 2019), but 1x 19.5K and 1x 14.6K crowd doesn't mean a team in the region would suddenly be nearly filling Grahame Park each week.

Gosford has shown if you give it a decent game at most Saturday / Sunday timeslots (especially if the sun is shining) they'll turn up, which is better than some grounds at the moment, but as shown in the past Thursday's and Friday's are terrible for CC (could you imagine a 6pm game at Gosford on a Friday?) and games against poor opposition don't rate.

This year will also be only the 3rd time since 2000 that the avg. for Gosford is more than 16K when the venue has held 2x or more games in a season...
 

ParraEelsNRL

Referee
Messages
27,694
That happened in 2017 albeit not at the expense of either of the other two teams and the roosters had a better average than Parra that season... as they did in 2018 and as they do so far this season playing at the SCG of all places.
You get a boost once every second year when you get to host the anzac day game.

Btw, the eels have won 4 wooden spoons in the last decade and are coming off one from last season, we have made the semies twice in that time. How would the roosters go if the roles where reversed? Like they did in the early 80's when they had about 300 turn up for one game?
 

Stallion

First Grade
Messages
7,467
When gold coast got the nod..

Central coast had 50 million in cash and sponsorships lined up.

And still lost the bid

The issue was the number. It was way too low. To cut the league to 14 top flight clubs was wrong! We now have 16 and its not enough. Remembering there was 22 top flight clubs about in 1997.
 
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