A Storm The Fans Needed To See

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday March 19, 1998

RICHARD HINDS

NO-ONE should be more acutely aware of the power of television over sport than a rugby league fan. To their deep regret, in the past three years the supporters of The Game They Play In Wigan have seen how television can divide loyalties, destroy friendships, inflate wages, pamper egos and inflict various other atrocities. And that's just in the Channel 9 make-up room.

While the code's equivalent of the Flat Earth Society - the inner-city clubs who believe they will survive in their own right - continues to mount a brave defence of the sport as the People's Game, it is difficult to view modern league as anything but a game made by TV, gov-erned by TV and played for TV.

So what did the vast majority of fans do on the first week of the new unified code? They stayed home and watched on TV. There was no sudden surge in rugby league attendances. No huge swell of support to celebrate peace in our time.

Not at the grounds, anyway.

The average crowd for the 10 games was about 13,500, a figure inflated by the almost 40,000 who turned out to see the Brisbane v Manly blockbuster. (Brisbane crowds, of course, are not indicative of, well, anything. You need to spend a month there one weekend to know why.)

On the other hand, the TV ratings were solid. At its peak, the Friday night special attracted an estimated 483,125 viewers (a rating of 23), while the Sunday afternoon game was seen by 348,422 (18).

It would be unfair to judge the interest in the fledgling NRL on its debut. The people who suffered the deepest wounds during the civil war, the fans, won't easily forget.

But when they do, will their act of forgiveness involve putting on their best tracky-daks and turning up at the ground or just switching on the idiot box?

The Brisbane-Manly epic, you would think, should have them piling into the family sedan and hot-footing it to their favourite venue. The game had great skill, controversy and - let's not avoid it - a bit of biffo. It filled the back pages for days, just the start the NRL wanted.

BUT, judging by the figures, Brisbane- Manly is more likely to inspire Doug Leaguehead to restock his fridge and ease into a comfy chair. Consider this: while those 348,422 watched televised league in Sydney on Sunday, only about 27,000 of Sydney's four million inhabitants bothered to turn up at the three matches.

No other major football code has such a disproportionate ratio of TV viewers to live attendance.

Sure, millions more people watch Manchester United on television than they do at the ground, but the Red Devils could sell out Old Trafford five times over. Yet there are likely to be rugby league games watched by a half-million TV viewers this year that struggle to attract 10,000 live bodies.

Why? There is the old "it is much easier to see on the TV" argument, but even American football, which can really be appreciated only in extreme close-up, is played before sell-out crowds.

More likely, it is because league fans have become culturally conditioned to accept their game as a TV event, and at the times TV wants to show it. As early as the 1970s, I can remember asking fans in Sydney if they had heard the score during a finals match, only to be howled down. "Shut up, we're trying not to hear the scores. We want to watch the game later!"

That the NRL was even able to consider stopping radio from broadcasting games live shows the extent to which league supporters have become accustomed to TV's dominant role. The same move elsewhere would be considered a breach of civil rights.

Gradually, the presentation of the game has come to reflect that made-for-TV status. You can only hear the real star of the show, Bill Harrigan, in your lounge room.

Given league's apparent television dependency, it was ironic that the game lost a great marketing chance at the weekend. The failure to show Melbourne Storm's dramatic victory over Illawarra free-to-air in Melbourne robbed the new franchise of a priceless promotion.

Moves to rectify the situation were afoot yesterday, hopefully not too late to persuade Melbourne supporters to appreciate the game the way its traditional constituency seems to do the most - on the telly.