Well this Thursday night, I should be standing on the hill at the Lavington Sports Oval cheering on the Country team as they smash their City rivals in the Annual City/Country Origin Rugby League fixture.
Well I would be, except for some blindsightedness of the games hierachy, because they decided to move the game to Coffs Harbour. Why? Because apparently the lighting at Lavington isn’t up to scratch for television purposes.
How come in an area that holds over 120,000 people we can’t have a venue that is suitable to hold games of this nature?
This would have been a great chance to promote the game here in the southern riverina, as close to Mexico as you can get. AFL heartland.
No doubt it would have packed the place out.
I still don’t understand how the lighting isn’t suitable though. It was suitable back in the ’90s when they played the Tooheys Challenge Pre-Season final here three years running. Channel 9 broadcasted the games then, they even brought a big screen so we could see the replays.
I have three petitions, firstly to the Albury City Council: Let’s get a venue in this town that is suitable to hold this kind of event, secondly, to the ARL, work with your fledgling areas let’s try to promote the game in an area that is tired of being force fed Aussie Rules and thirdly, to the citizens of Albury/Wodonga, let’s get back on the map, let’s get behind our sporting associations and get high quality, meaningful matches here, no matter what the code. For crying out loud, our Festival of Sport is history, remember what brought that on; an ICC World Cup match between England and Zimbabwe.
We haven’t had a high profile fixture of any sort now for a few years. Are we a region moving forward? or just one that is slowly moving into obscurity?
