You dinosaurs and your freakin hills!
The "Hill" is the worst part of any of our grounds. Other then the parent that wants to let their little monsters run a muck to drain all that annoying childhood energy out of them, not to many others want to sit in a damp cold or wet hill, especially at night in the middle of winter mate.
That is why so many games that are played with hills look so empty and lack any atmosphere or have any hype to them at all. If I had my way I would make it a mandated rule that all teams must play out of proper all seat stadiums as part of their licence agreement. If they don't then the NRL can move that licence to whichever region of Australia they chose fit to.
That would force the hand of a few clubs to either do so or perish. Even if they moved to say Olympic, Parra or SFS Stadiums, say the Tigers, Saints or Sharks, if their crowds stayed flat or declined then maybe they would pull their finger out and either make a massive effort to lobby Governments to get a Stadium or if that didn't work, one or two of them would bite the bullet and make the mammoth and monumental decision to move to places like Perth or Adelaide, otherwise they would be left behind.
This molly coddling of all our clubs is what is helping to hold our game back from making the big hard decisions. Tough love is what is needed to help our game to realize its maximum potential. Make the rules of holding on to a franchise licence of the highest and difficult standards, otherwise mediocrity will always linger and allow the armatures and ne'er-do-wells that have a place within our game to hide and actually flourish.
Massive "Hills" at our grounds are the visual result of a game that is poorly run. They are nothing to be proud of or celebrate. When I and hundreds of thousands of others if not millions see hills, especially half empty ones, all we think is amateurism and a sport that isn't that important or popular and people don't care for much. They are a legacy of a bygone era that almost all other tier one sports around the world grew out of decades ago let alone still carry on with in the 21st Century. Modern man and woman spits at the "Hill" and will rush to the dry, under cover comfort of a nice and modern facility that allows them easily access to food, drinks, toilets, Wi-Fi, screens and so on and if you put a full on roof over it, warmth in those bleak, windy and wet winter overcast days and miserable nights. The difference that that creates in the minds of the casual spectator that is umming and ahing about going to a game or not is massive and can turn those casuals into regulars.
The point is "HILLS" are like an acute case of the crabs on a beautiful lady. Sure you will hold her hand, even in public, but they need to be eradicated before anyone wants to commit and go all in.
