Talk is that the crowd for State Of Origin number 3 in Sydney on Wednesday night will struggle to get a big crowd. Ticket sales have supposedly been slow, people are selling tickets on EBay for cheap, and while they are talking about a crowd of 50-60,000, I’m tipping more along the likes of 40,000.
So if you are the New South Wales Rugby League, you promote the third game like never before, right?
No.
A note to the New South Wales Rugby League: You don’t promote State Of Origin three by sending players to go watch Danny Green training for his next fight!
Now Danny Green is a nice enough bloke. He trains with the Parramatta Eels, is based in Sydney and has one of the 57 versions of the world title going around. He has also been given the honour of handing out the jerseys to players before the game.
Keep in mind, Danny Green is from Western Australia.
This isn’t about Danny Green though, this is about the New South Wales Rugby League.
Heading into game one, having lost four straight series in a row and needing to once again sell tickets to a game in Sydney, the New South Wales did the most logical thing you could imagine.
They went and stayed for the week in Wollongong!
For game two the New South Wales looked to get some good PR on their side. They headed up to the Northern New South Wales coast to an area hit recently by a natural disaster, a tornado to be specific.
That went well, until Andrew Johns did his version of Michael Richards and now, I don’t even think that place up the coast exists any more!
It all got better too when New South Wales got destroyed in the second game, lost the series and hey, it was the fifth year in a row. Awesome!
So now we have game three to sell.
Logic says to me, you do three fan days. One in Eastern Sydney, one in the geographical center of Sydney, around Parramatta, and you do a final fan day at Blacktown or Penrith in Sydneys west.
Seems logical.
Hell you could split the squad into three groups and do it all in one day. It would take, what, three or four hours of the ten day Origin camp?
You get a set up at these fans days where people can meet players and get autographs, buy merchanse and…..hey I know…..buy tickets to the game!
Wow, I’m a jeeeeeneus!
There is already news that Melbourne wants to host another State Of Origin game in 2012, and in 2013 New Zealand actually wants to host a game.
I say, go for it!
Its obvious the Victorian government and a few sheep farmers across the “dutch” will be far better at marketing games than the New South Wales Rugby League can.
