Storm applaud NRL after fixture headache
Monday, May 7, 2007 - 5:37 PM
A week after being blasted for ridiculous scheduling, the NRL has been applauded for helping Melbourne with their upcoming nightmare.
Melbourne assistant coach Dean Lance praised NRL chief operating officer Graham Annesley for assisting the Storm work around their State of Origin II headache.
The Storm are drawn to play New Zealand Warriors in Auckland on Sunday June 10, then play North Queensland in Townsville on Saturday June 16.
In between these games will be the second Origin game in Sydney where the Storm could possibly provide up to eight players.
While the Storm had failed in a bid to have one of their games switched to Melbourne to reduce the amount of travel, they have been helped by the NRL with travel arrangements.
Melbourne will travel direct from Auckland to Townsville without incurring a large cost.
Lance said reducing the travel for the squad was the main concern and they would spend the entire week in north Queensland before playing the Cowboys.
"The NRL have been pretty good with it and are helping us out the best way they can," he said.
"Graham Annesley's doing everything he can to assist us in that. They have been very good bending over backwards to try and help us get through that tough time ... you don't hear that very often.
"(The NRL has been) helping us about travel and making sure things are done as feasibly practical as possible without flying all the way back here and flying all the way up there.
"We are working on it but it's going to be a tough couple of weeks no doubt about it."
The NRL had come under fire last week when Cronulla were forced to play Newcastle on Monday and Auckland on Saturday with several players also required for representative duty in Coffs Harbour in Thursday.
Source: AAP
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