Warriors bidders eye US fixtures

The twist for our bid is that we want to bring some games to . . . Hawaii, Las Vegas or Los Angeles.

Michael Burgess

The Warriors could be playing in Hawaii, Las Vegas or Los Angeles in the future — if the grand plans of the Tongan-American NFL consortium that hope to buy the club come to fruition.

As reported in the Herald on Sunday, a syndicate that includes six current or former NFL players and is headed by Hawaiian politician Richard Fale want to gain control of the Warriors.

There are still several other potential buyers in the mix but the American group is believed to be the leading contender.

And they have some ambitious plans, including taking “two to four” Warriors games to North America each year.

“I guess the twist for our bid is that we want to bring some games to the United States and the team will play in Hawaii, Las Vegas or Los Angeles,” Fale told the Herald. Richard Fale

“Those are venues that we are interested in bringing the team and the game to. We have already started working through the assessment of the necessary facilities to accommodate those possibilities.”

Fale is aware that contractually the Warriors have to play 10 games each year at Mt Smart, but hopes other NRL teams will be open to “trading” their home fixtures to allow more matches on the other side of the Pacific, as well as pre-season games.

He concedes the prevalence of artificial turf in many US stadiums (especially American football facilities) would be an issue but doesn’t see it as insurmountable.

“Some questions would need to be asked about that,” said Fale. “I don’t think we would want to put the players on artificial turf, especially if they’ve never played on it before.

“We have had some Australian [league] teams from the second tier competition come to Hawaii and play at Aloha Stadium [in Honolulu] and they had no problem with it . . . they said it was fine.

“But when you are dealing with elite players, you don’t want to put them on anything new until they have tried it out first. Ideally they would come two or three days before, and have their workout sessions on the artificial surface so they can have some experience on that turf.”

There have been league ventures to the US before, but nothing on the scale Fale is proposing.

The Rabbitohs played an exhibition game against Leeds in Florida in 2008, while a fourth State of Origin match was held in California in 1987.

The main issues would be travel time — it would be more feasible to play matches there in the pre-season or after bye rounds for both teams — and costs, with flights and accommodation.

Fale also remains bullish that under the direction of his consortium, the Warriors can achieve swift and sustained success.

“After the amount of work and analysis that we have already put into this, we cannot see any reason why we won’t be successful,” said Fale.

“It will take two or three years to work a few things out, but once we do, we don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t be playing in the championship game in six or seven of the next 10 years and definitely in the semifinals.

“If we don’t get to the semifinals for the next 10 years, once we take over the organisation, we will be immensely shocked.”