shows where the game is at and still has alot of work ahead for the IC. On a plus the atmosphere sounded great and the Manly, and Broncos, fans made plenty of noise.
Yes.
For me the NRL need to look at how the finals are promoted and marketed, and determine if the game day experience itself could be improved.
That crowd is actually decent judging by the stories coming out in the previous few days but I still find it incredible that people were on here saying they wouldn't travel to the game to see a team they are "obsessed with" play in a prelim final because there might not be enough parking spaces available (!). That either says a lot about those fans or a lot about the finals experience the NRL are offering, or both.
It's been debated to death on here but clubs that have been around for the best part of a century in the real heartland of any sport worldwide should be able to (especially with free buses) get more than 25k of their own fans to one of the biggest games in their history. There are loads of other sports where tickets go from being readily available in the regular season to impossible to obtain in the playoffs. Why dont we have that demand?
People need to get the AFL chip off their shoulders as well. If you point out good things AFL clubs are doing to build their fan bases you get called a 'troll' or worse. We need to look at how they've built clubs with 50k members who are desperate to come back every year. Sydney is a bigger city and just as obsessed with sport - it should be perfectly possible.
This isn't intended as a dig at Manly. It was a par crowd, but we need to put actions in place to start getting them better.
