It is funny mate. I also remember Richardson while your CEO, hiring a photographer to take a pic of an SFS crowd as proof of Roosters fibbing about crowd numbers. He didn’t seem to mind that the pic was taken during the under 21s and that the SCG, the stadium owner, post the figures.
I think you'll find that was Roger Cowan.The lensman was Neil Billington, and the ground clock was included in the pictures. They even photographed a woman entering her ticket into the turnstile multiple times.
The Roosters were not singled out, this happened at several other grounds as well. Artificially inflating crowd figures was rife at the time. The Roosters did not claim that the pics were taken during the lower grades, they claimed that everyone was in the corporate boxes.
If the governing body had not decided which clubs it wanted to keep, and then formulated its criteria accordingly, such behaviour would not have been necessary.
As it was we were only saved by the still prevalent apathy of the Central Coast, who didn't get behind the North Sydney Bears. It beggars belief that we were second from the bottom, and the Rabbitohs were below us.