Sceptical NRL CEO’s left to eat humble pie after the success of the inaugural Nines tournament
Josh Massoud
The Sunday Telegraph
February 15, 2014 10:00PM
WHEN the NRL first called for a show of hands from the 16 club CEOs on the Auckland Nines, just six arms were raised.
That was in late 2012. Just over a year later many of the same dissenters were watching history unfold in Auckland, eating humble pie in corporate boxes at a heaving Eden Park.
If Dave Smith wanted a blueprint of how to evolve rugby league, he should ditch the E-Squared formula and circulate the carnival-like concourses of this venue.
What he would discover is an atmosphere entirely divorced from the average NRL fixture, let alone tumbleweed-strewn trials.
Think a raunchy Halloween shindig crossed with the decadence of Cup Day at Flemington. Without any prompting, New Zealanders and the 7,000 visitors from across the ditch turned the tournament’s inaugural day into a intoxicating dress-up party for the young and the beautiful.
This was rugby league as we’ve never seen it before, dressed in every costume imaginable: Native Indians, naughty schoolgirls, and non-compliant nuns.
Accustomed to the relatively rigid atmosphere at competition games, club officials were astounded. Given the fact all 92,000 tickets were pre-sold months before this weekend, it’s hard to appreciate the previous scepticism.
Much of the resistance was based on the NRL having to split profits with the concept’s creator and promoter, Duco Events. That spelled less money for the game, and, therefore, the clubs.
The problem was Duco had the relationship with Auckland City Council, whose $12 million investment over the next five years was indispensable. Realising they were up against some of the most powerful and long-serving administrators in the game, Duco bosses David Higgins and Dean Lonergan personally wooed the clubs for months until a second vote was taken midway through last year.
This time 14 hands were raised. Judging by yesterday’s extraordinary scenes, rugby league folklore will speak kindly of that day.
Even before the Sharks and Knights kicked-off, much of the talk in New Zealand centred how this event would measure-up against last weekend’s annual rugby union sevens tournament in Wellington. That event had been running successfully for 15 years, but, in a godsend for league lovers, the latest edition was it’s most shameful.
A total of 270 people were ejected from Westpac Stadium, reducing an already disappointing turn-out of less than 30,000 over two days. Lonergan believes the poor attendance was due to the Auckland Nines, but he nonetheless took lessons from the rival code’s woes.
Patrons at Eden Park were limited to two drinks each, rather than the standard four. The precaution led to massive queues at every bar, but none of the drinkers seemed unhappy as they compared costumes or exchanged phone numbers.
The stand-out feature of those in line was not their extravagant dress. It was their age. In recent years, older faces have started to dominate NRL crowds and females are still comfortably in the minority.
But in Auckland yesterday the stands boasted an equal gender split. Better still, they were awash with a Gen Y flavour more commonly associated with an outdoor music festival.
Out with the old, in with the new.
