The game pulled only 20,000 at ANZ in Brisbane anyway. No doubt having the other Dogs Eels semi at SFS was in the best interests of the game/News Ltd. As for the fairness...
The schedule for the finals that year was fixed, there was supposed to be no changes to it. The NRL only changed it because of the Broncos. Nothing to do with Buddlogs nor the Eels and they said as such. Hence Roosters supporters had for over a week expecting we'd be playing a GF Qualifier at the SFS to then be told "no, you are now playing at ANZ in Brisbane" after our team had earned (under the finals set up of the time) to play it in Sydney.
Thus for those, like me, who could not afford to but last minute airline tickets and book a hotel room to fly to Brisbane, the club put on a low cost price option - the bus. We had 2 bus loads travel up to ANZ Stadium, we left Friday night from Easts Leagues. We got to Brisbane around mid-day Saturday (havoing stopped off for breakfast en route) and were dropped off at ANZ Stadium. The bus drivers went off to rest as they would be driving us back to Sydney later that night.
Twas a stinkling hot day in Brisbane thaty day, and our seats were in the grand stand on the eastern side of the ground. That grand stand, built for the 1982 Commonwealth games had aluminium flooring, so it was like sitting on a hot plate during the lower grade games. Most of us spent the time under the stand staying out of the sun to keep cool.
As to the game, the Roosters got hammered. We had Freddy play injured and had 2 major injuries in the first 10 minutes to boot. Brisbane though were, in my opinion, the best team in the comp that year.
We had been told by a staff member of the Roosters who'd traveled up on the bus with us that arrangements had been made with the Broncos so that after the game we would be able to gain admittance to the QEII Sports Bar (which was located under the western grade stand) as the bus drivers had to have a mandatory 8 hour break before they could drive us back to Sydney. When we got to the entrance (after having soke bad crowd experiences where grown adults were threatening, pushing and shoving the women and kids who were in our group) the staff of the bar knew nothing about the arrangemenbts and at first refused us admission.
After some persuasion then they would let the adults in but not the kids. Considering what had happened on the walk around to the bar it was unacceptable. Thus we had to go find our liaision from the Rooster (getting him out of the dressing room) to come sort it out. We eventually got in. Even then we still had dolts who couldn't resist hurling further abuse at us. We said nothing yet we got abused just for waking past. The people I were with were not the kind that, even had we won, would have said anything to anyone else at all.
Then at around 8pm the buses came and picked us up for the long drive back to Sydney. We got back to Easts Leagues Club at Bondi mid-morning on Sunday. All very dejected and all very tired.
