Marketing blamed for low Test crowd
GOLD Coast rugby diehards and former top players blame Rugby Australia for a nearly half-empty stadium at the city’s first Test in four years.
A touch over 16,000 fans turned out to 27,000-capacity Cbus Super Stadium on Saturday night to watch the Wallabies lose a nailbiter 23-19 to Argentina.
Large sections of the four stands sat glaringly empty, but the official turnout of 16,019 was up on the paltry 14,281 who attended the Wallabies-Argentina game at the same venue in 2014.
In the lead-up, city leaders had expressed fears another repeat of the low turnout could impact the city’s ability to be awarded another international any time soon.
A Rugby Australia spokesman yesterday told the Bulletin the organisation was “happy with the turnout” but former first-class players are blaming what they felt was poor marketing.
Gold Coast-based ex-Wallaby Mat Rogers said Cbus Stadium itself wasn’t the problem: “Its not where it is, or how people are getting there. It’s what they are doing to get people in.
“Sport is for the people and Rugby Australia needs to make sure they feel valued because at the end of the day it comes down to them going.
“People are getting tired of spending their hard-earned money on a game with no turnout.”
Former Queensland Reds player Jeremy Austin said if Rugby Australia didn’t bring a big game back to the Gold Coast any time soon because of low attendance it’s would be their own fault.
“The reason the game had such a poor turnout was because no one heard about it until the week before,” he said. “For two (international) teams to be playing you’ve got to be disappointed with the turnout. “Promotion wasn’t where it should’ve been. That’s a problem Rugby Austalia needs to fix.”
A Rugby Australia spokesperson said: “The crowd was in line with what we have had in recent years with Argentina games, so we were overall happy with the turnout.
“At this stage we do not have another Test locked in for Gold Coast, but there is no reason we wouldn’t return for future matches.”
Weeks out from the Test, Rugby Australia shared its marketing plans with the Bulletin, saying an initial focus was on “community engagement” with over 1200 free tickets for juniors, $10 university student tickets plus discounts for Coast rugby clubs.
THE M1 is the Gold Coast’s own symbolic version of the Berlin Wall and it continues to divide our city into two classes of residents.
With the recent council report revealing in some northern suburbs, 45 per cent of traffic is travelling across the M1 on local trips.
This congestion misery for those outside of the inter-connected ‘strip’ plagues not only our welfare, way of life and the overall attitude of the city’s bulk workforce (everyday northern Gold Coasters) but it continues to cripple our wider city economy.
Hundreds of small businesses who rely on our road networks across the city are being impacted financially every day, all the while proposed large transport infrastructure projects like additional light rail extensions and the proposed Coomera Connector (M2) remain unstarted.
While anyone who read the Gold Coast Bulletin report on the council’s $705 million road upgrade plan between 2018 and 2031 can see it as a great start, it was still a sobering task looking through and matching roads in your suburb with their corresponding financial year date.
All the more reason why the City of Gold Coast should be the beneficiary of the $80 million plus leftover from the Commonwealth Games contingency fund. I can think of no better final legacy from the Games than the injection of this fund into fast-tracking four critical transport infrastructure projects in our city:
1. Council planned road upgrades in the north.
2. Reliable Gold Coast ferry system.
3. Breaking ground on the proposed Coomera Connector (second M1).
4. Extending the light rail.
Gold Coasters are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The tranquil mountains that form our Gold Coast Hinterland is the rock and 57km of golden beach coastline is the hard place.
These geographical tourism goldmines unfortunately pin our city’s growth on both sides which has resulted in our linear urban sprawl.
What compounds the problem is our proximity to Brisbane. It’s a challenge to have the largest council (Brisbane) and the sixth largest city (Gold Coast) in Australia only 70km apart. These geographical challenges are not new continue to contribute to a large part of the problem.
Instead we’ve had for the better part of the past two decades leaders and governments unwilling to invest in the problem.
The now two staged operational light rail system has proven to even the most vocal opponents that it works.
When designing a city public transport network, the impulse is always to run direct services between residential areas and hubs. While the extension south dominates our discussion point, the underreported extension to also take it westbound via Chevron Island is a silver bullet that should be at the top of our discussion.
The only thing that can tear down our city’s symbolic Berlin Wall is a well-connected network of reliable and efficient public transport complimented by roads built to sustain continued growth.