Phil Rothfield: Constant mistakes make NRL administration look amateurish
Phil Rothfield
The Daily Telegraph
March 23, 2015 12:00AM
IT’S hard to believe the NRL is now running a $350 million business.
Every week something goes wrong that makes the people in charge look like a bunch of amateurs.
The playing surface at Brookvale Oval on Friday night was an embarrassment to the game and a safety *hazard to the players.
Here we have the biggest television audience of the week in prime time watching the Sea Eagles and the Bulldogs battle it out on a cow paddock.
I spoke to a junior rugby league official in the Shire on Saturday morning who said the Cronulla junior rugby league would not allow kids to play on a surface that poor at this time of the year, let alone professional football players.
The AFL employs ground staff who inspect the playing surfaces at all stadiums in the week leading up to games. They would never have allowed a situation like Brookvale Oval.
Then we go back to last Monday night at Campbelltown Sports Ground, where Wests Tigers hosted St George Illawarra.
Everyone knows Wests *Tigers have a huge battle for survival on their hands.
They are only in the competition because they borrowed millions from the NRL.
To get supporters and the people of Campbelltown to the football they have to ensure the game-day experience is as close to perfect as possible.
And what happens? They don’t employ enough people on the turnstiles and hundreds of fans are locked outside the ground in queues of hundreds of metres for the *entire first half.
I was contacted on Saturday by the father of a family who drove all the way from Wollongong to cheer for the Dragons.
There was seven of them — mum, dad and five kids. They came all that way but could only get in for the *second half.
Now this is a grassroots, traditional footy family. People who are lifetime rugby league fans.
Yet we had Wests Tigers chair Marina Go almost celebrating by tweeting from the comfort of her corporate suite: “Game has started. Still queues to get into the game — for miles. Love our fans.”
What sort of business is *allowed to be run this poorly?
How many more $600,000-a-year administrators do we need at Moore Park to get it right?
Todd Greenberg was supposed to be the man to fix the game and its problems when he was hired on the big bucks last season.
His workload has been halved this year by the recent appointment of Shane Richardson.
Yet they still can’t get it right and wonder why crowds have been poor for the opening three rounds of the competition.
White Ribbon @WhiteRibbonAust
BUZZ ROTHFIELD ‏@BuzzRothfieldhttps://twitter.com/BuzzRothfield/status/579577355141664768
BUZZ ROTHFIELD @BuzzRothfield 
