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Las Vegas: When the NRL announced earlier this year it was going to start the 2024 season in Las Vegas, the 17 clubs were asked to flag their interest in playing in the extravaganza at Allegiant Stadium.
Cynical club bosses said you better play in the first year because there wouldn’t be a second, even though the NRL has a five-year strategy.
Among the first to call head office was Penrith’s Brian Fletcher and the Warriors’ Cameron George – to say they weren’t interested.
Fletcher’s reasoning was BlueBet Stadium will undergo a significant redevelopment in 2025, so he’s looking for stadiums all over the place to play home games that year.
As soon as George learnt the NRL wanted to turn the weekend in Las Vegas into an Australian-themed event, he told ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys that it didn’t make sense for the New Zealand-based team to be a part of it.
Yet, both teams should be a lock for year two.
Aaron Woods, Campbell Graham, Spencer Leniu and Billy Walters have been busy winning hearts and minds in Las Vegas.Credit: NRL Photos
As the three-time defending premiers, with a fourth possibly on the way, the Panthers are the benchmark of the competition and deserve their spot. A Penrith-Parramatta match has a nice ring to it.
The Warriors deserve a start not just because of what they did for the game during COVID-19, or their renaissance under new coach Andrew Webster. They will garner support from the Pacific Island communities all over the US. In 2021, 1.5 million people in the US identified as Pacific Islander.
Who would they play? Melbourne, perhaps, given the history and healthy rivalry between the two clubs.
“No decisions have been made,” NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo said. “We want to give all the clubs an opportunity to win over new fans, and start new relationships with franchises here, so we will have to rotate through that. We have to be strategic about who we bring here next. I don’t know who you need next.”
NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo.Credit: NRL Photos
If the NRL wants to showcase the code to new fans, it can’t afford to select out-of-form strugglers. Let’s not expose the poor Americans to the Wests Tigers or Dragons just yet.
The NRL believes the game’s best selling point is its physicality, hence the “no pads, no helmets” campaign.
NFL coaches have been aware of the game’s toughness for decades, though.
At the end of the 1973 season, Jack Gibson travelled to San Francisco to meet with legendary 49ers coach Dick Nolan.
He brought with him a video of the notorious 1973 grand final between Cronulla and Manly, considered the most violent on record. There was punching, kicking, gouging and knees. Players could hear bones breaking on the field.
Nolan sat in silence, mouth agape, before turning to Gibson at full-time: “What did I just watch?”
If the NRL is serious about selling its product to Americans, it should consider taking a State of Origin there.
Of course, it’s been done before: an exhibition match in 1987 at Veterans Memorial Stadium at Long Beach. It’s best known for Blues captain Peter Sterling getting caught in the run-through banner and only 17,000 turning up.
Origin has become such a high-speed, brutal contest played under different conditions because the referee puts the whistle away that it has become the game’s benchmark spectacle.
Indeed, the crowd at Allegiant Stadium sounds, smells and looks like an Origin crowd.
The Raiders are 5-8 and struggling this season. They lost 3-0 to Minnesota Vikings last Sunday in what some people are calling the worst game of the season.
But the faithful, from the nosebleeds to the fence line, didn’t let up the whole time. “It’s like an Origin crowd,” former NSW prop Aaron Woods said.
Abdo said playing an Origin in the US had been discussed.
“Nothing is off the table,” Abdo said. “We want to bring women’s games, State of Origins, internationals … How can we get sustainable pathways here? The Toronto Wolfpack made a bold bid to get into the Super League. Maybe there could be an American one in the future. You’ve got to start somewhere.”
The problem, of course, is the timing.
Channel Nine – which is owned by Nine Entertainment Co, the publisher of this masthead – only wants Origin to be played on Wednesday night because of the ratings its attracts.
A 8pm kick-off would mean the match is played Vegas time at midnight.
There would need to be a significant concession from Nine, or whoever holds the Origin broadcast rights from 2028, for it to happen.
But the NRL is a can-do organisation, as V’landys has told us. Let’s see if he can do this one.
The author travelled to Las Vegas courtesy of the NRL.
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