All quiet on NRL’s hills

EVEN those fans with club emblems tattooed on their foreheads are impartial enough to see that the AFL remains a furlong in front of the NRL when it comes to drawing a crowd.

Call it Melbourne’s parochialism but more than 90,000 watched Friday night’s Richmond and Geelong contest.

Embarrassingly the NRL struggled to draw that figure across four finals matches.

Forget TV viewers for a moment. When it comes to drawing a crowd the NRL has much to improve, ranging from prices to venues to gameday experiences.

Regardless of your footballing persuasion, we want crowds – but at the moment only one code is delivering.