Moedogg
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Canterbury chief executive Todd Greenberg said the NRL's decision not to kick off this season with the Roosters-Bulldogs derby - Sonny Bill Williams versus his old team - had cost the club as many as 40,000 ticket sales and a financial windfall.
The two sides play at ANZ Stadium on Friday night but the crowd for a game which, under normal circumstances would be branded a blockbuster, was expected to be down from 60,000 to just over 20,000 because of the absence of both teams' State of Origin players.
The notion of opening the year with the Roosters' prized recruit, Williams, taking on the club he abandoned in 2008 to play rugby union and then box was a marketer's dream. However, the NRL didn't take the bait Greenberg offered them during the off-season and he admitted the club was about to count the cost of an opportunity lost.
''If we had've had it in round one we were confident of attracting a crowd of about 60,000, and that's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to a club like ours,'' Greenberg said. ''We'll have a crowd in the 20s [thousands] but I don't think it'll be in the 30s.
''When David Gallop was still in the chair [as the NRL's chief executive], I wrote a pitch asking if we could play the opening game of the season this year. You want these match-ups to always have your best players in them.''
The Bulldogs' request was denied and ancient rivals, the Roosters and South Sydney, played in the season opener. Now, Canterbury is promoting a game that lacks five players who have been stood down because of Origin duty - their five-eighth Josh Reynolds and centre Josh Morris - while the Roosters lack the strike power of halves Mitchell Pearce and James Maloney, and centre Michael Jennings.
Greenberg, who will join the NRL's senior management in August, said while the decision to schedule the derby during the Origin series would have a negative commercial impact on the gate takings he conceded it was an unavoidable situation.
''It's the nature of what happens around State of Origin,'' he said. ''To be fair, with this one you wouldn't have foreseen that Josh Reynolds would be picked for NSW, while the Roosters wouldn't have known at the time that Jennings would even be playing for them or Maloney would be in the [NSW] side.
''The short answer to the question is you want your best players playing … we won't be able to commercialise this game as much as we potentially could have.''
Adding to Canterbury's woes is they face the same dilemma again when they host Melbourne in round 18. The Storm will be without their Origin stars, including Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/...-scheduling-20130620-2oluz.html#ixzz2WlJZQaFb
Well done NRL...
The two sides play at ANZ Stadium on Friday night but the crowd for a game which, under normal circumstances would be branded a blockbuster, was expected to be down from 60,000 to just over 20,000 because of the absence of both teams' State of Origin players.
The notion of opening the year with the Roosters' prized recruit, Williams, taking on the club he abandoned in 2008 to play rugby union and then box was a marketer's dream. However, the NRL didn't take the bait Greenberg offered them during the off-season and he admitted the club was about to count the cost of an opportunity lost.
''If we had've had it in round one we were confident of attracting a crowd of about 60,000, and that's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to a club like ours,'' Greenberg said. ''We'll have a crowd in the 20s [thousands] but I don't think it'll be in the 30s.
''When David Gallop was still in the chair [as the NRL's chief executive], I wrote a pitch asking if we could play the opening game of the season this year. You want these match-ups to always have your best players in them.''
The Bulldogs' request was denied and ancient rivals, the Roosters and South Sydney, played in the season opener. Now, Canterbury is promoting a game that lacks five players who have been stood down because of Origin duty - their five-eighth Josh Reynolds and centre Josh Morris - while the Roosters lack the strike power of halves Mitchell Pearce and James Maloney, and centre Michael Jennings.
Greenberg, who will join the NRL's senior management in August, said while the decision to schedule the derby during the Origin series would have a negative commercial impact on the gate takings he conceded it was an unavoidable situation.
''It's the nature of what happens around State of Origin,'' he said. ''To be fair, with this one you wouldn't have foreseen that Josh Reynolds would be picked for NSW, while the Roosters wouldn't have known at the time that Jennings would even be playing for them or Maloney would be in the [NSW] side.
''The short answer to the question is you want your best players playing … we won't be able to commercialise this game as much as we potentially could have.''
Adding to Canterbury's woes is they face the same dilemma again when they host Melbourne in round 18. The Storm will be without their Origin stars, including Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/...-scheduling-20130620-2oluz.html#ixzz2WlJZQaFb
Well done NRL...
