Waratahs need to take game back to the people, or else be swallowed
Posted: Sat May 05, 2018 12:20 pm
Never thought I’d see the day the Waratahs took a game away from Allianz Stadium to play at that dump called Brookvale Oval. Gee Rugby really is struggling.
Waratahs need to take game back to the people, or else be swallowed
By Peter FitzSimons
4 May 2018
It was quite the seminal moment. Two weeks ago, see, the Waratahs were playing the Lions at the Sydney Football Stadium, while the Swans were playing the Adelaide Crows next door at the SCG. The Tahs had about 10,000 spectators, scattered around the cavernous stadium “like confetti in a grave-yard,” to use John Arlott’s felicitous phrase, while the Swannies pulled in four times that number, and were so tightly packed, someone who fainted could not have fallen over. Time and again those watching the Lions put the Tahs to the sword were sitting in something close to mournful silence as the roar of the crowd at the SCG rolled over them like a ball of dirty thunder, making the confetti bounce and the Tahs themselves look at each other with wonder. They’d never heard a crowd noise like it?
It all prompted that cur, Malcolm Knox – who grew up on a solid diet of rugby, but now finds himself ensconced among the Swans faithful – to conclude that Sydney is now an AFL town!
Well, we never.
So, where to, from here, for the Tahs? The answer is, precisely where they are going. To Brookvale Oval tonight, to take on the Blues. If the people won’t come to the game, take the game to the people. Yes, these are tough times for rugby – and certainly never tougher, in the professional age – but there is a way forward.
For even as the rugby crowds have fallen abysmally for the big stadium games they’ve been coming back in the 'burbs. So go back to the 'burbs, to stadiums like Brookvale.
They need to get back to them, get amongst them.
And if it were me, I would put the best of the club-rounds on as curtain-raisers – Manly vs Warringah Rats, Sydney Uni vs Randwick etc.
And if things still go bad, put the Tahs on as curtain-raisers to them. But move, adapt, change!
The best reward for those who go to Brookie tonight might be the Waratahs beating the Auckland Blues, which will be the first victory of an Australian Super team over a New Zealand side in the last 36 times at bat. Tough times, Mama. Tough times, indeed.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/waratahs-n ... 4zdgx.html