I would love to see us play all 11 at the SCG, but it is an absolutely crap place to get from when coming from Canberra- that is the only advantage ANZ has over the SCG.
Only games I want to see us play at ANZ potentially when GWS are in is perhaps the Derby once it gets a bit of stature about it and perhaps finals games if its say a Prelim. If we never played there again I wouldn't be unhappy. Unless you fork out for platinum seats, the views are crap at ANZ, and its a hollow concrete monolith with zero atmosphere. The surface is tripe due to all the rugby league/union whatever else (And the stands being moved over it on the edges as well. doesn't help)
As for your issue Beaussie with not being able to play at other styles of grounds because we play at the SCG- that is absolute bollox. A good team is a good team, and will win on other grounds without a problem. We won plenty of big games in 05 and 06 away from the SCG I seem to remember. In reality, with the exception of the amount of running needed to be done and some of the angles when kicking for goal, does it really matter what shape or size the ground is? The best team will 99% of the time win the game.
More important to consider than anything else is our record and form at each ground. And our record and form at ANZ is now crap.
Occupational hazards:
- animal psychic Amanda de WarrenI don't eat animals since discovering this ability. I used to. But one day the lamb I was eating came through to me and ever since then I haven't been able to eat meat.
We'd have little trouble getting 50k crowds if most of our fickle eastern suburbs "supporters" would show up to actually support the team when it plays in Sydney.
It's only 3 years ago we averaged more than 60,000 per game at Homebush. You would think the capacity to attract crowds like that would be a matter of pride among club members. You can forgive the bandwagon supporters for not attending all our games in Sydney. But not people who are paid up members. It's pretty pathetic.
I hate ANZ.
You actually raise an intriguing point here.
I think the last time we sold out the SCG was way back in 1997 against Geelong, when we got a record 46,168.
We didn't even crack the 40K mark for the famous semi-final against Geelong in 2005. The crowd for that match was 39,079.
There's certainly no hard evidence, in terms of crowd size, that Homebush has been a failure.
Here are the average crowd sizes for home-and-away matches since we started playing at Homebush in 2002:
Year SCG Homebush
2002 19,957 42,986
2003 26,512 49,704
2004 26,879 42,485
2005 28,733 39,682
2006 30,401 49,092
2007 25,222 63,392
2008 25,452 45,824
2009 26,866 36,874
2010 27,891 35,208
The evidence shows that hundreds of thousands of extra people have come to our games since we've started playing at Homebush.
Obviously, the big crowds have significantly declined since 2007, which was an exceptional year. But that just mirrors our decline as genuine contenders. Sydney knows we're not the real deal at the moment. Especially when Roos says it so blatantly.
The ANZ viral marketing team have been busy tonight.
Bottom line is we fans don't care for ANZ and neither do the players. I for one won't be dealing with it next season.
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ROK's comment at the after match said it all. Even the players hate playing there.
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