The Serve

Why City v Country isn’t going away

It’s all very well to put a picture of a concussed Brett Kimmorley on the back page of the major paper. Easy to quote coaches who are sick to death of being hamstrung by ridiculous scheduling and overuse of their charges. Logical to point at the horrible attendance in a town which had more patrons at a trial game weeks earlier. There is no reason to play City against Country, moreover play on a Thursday, except for one minor detail. A detail everyone keeps glossing over.

People at home watched it in droves.

This meaningless, half hearted contest, in which players admitted going at half pace to avoid injury, had more viewers in Sydney than Law and Order and Lost. It won its timeslot. Something The Footy Show rarely, if ever, achieves. For the majority of people who want the game canned, that’s a problem.

Nine owns this game for another five years, and has the rights to run it on a Wednesday or Thursday each time. They’re smart over at Willoughby. If the match was played on a Friday, it would simply take away a regular match. No point in eating ones own. They’re almost getting a freebie. It continues a procession where the networks are calling the shots and the league has no response.

The AFL players association successfully lobbied to guarantee its clients a six day break every week. They did it years ago. Rugby league has no such safety net. Nine puts its two top choices on Friday night. Choice three of each weekend is played on Fox each Monday night. The best games at each extreme of the weekend immediately creates a problem. Several times this season, the four or five day break has been a factor. Look at the Sharks. Forgetting the fact that five of their players were involved in the city/country game, they played a Monday night in Newcastle, a Saturday night in Auckland and will back up for a Friday game in Brisbane. 3 games in 10 days. Where is the common sense?

And this is only round 8. Imagine when the players are really fatigued.

This is just the beginning. When the NRL signed the new rights deal, they signed away all the power. And as we’ve come to discover with the AFL deal, the league not only sold their soul, they undersold it.