Off-field wise, hopefully gold coast finally pick up there game for this, but alas it's a sport event so who am i kidding. A obvious switch of fixtures to a saturday sunday combo and the fact that it is not in the middle of schoolies will obviously improve things compared to last year but i'm not convinced it will be anything significant due to the continued lack of advertising or the fact that they are still hosting it at Robina, which is soulless on the best of days. Ballymore should be the venue if it is another failure and QLD is determined to hold onto it. Last years coverage on the tv with a less than half full Stadium didn't convince anyone (Australian or those abroad) to make an effort to travel to this, rather than Wellington or Hong Kong. This needs to be a major event for the ARU with olympic participation coming up in 4 years, we can't allow it to continue to be substandard.
Agreed. He should be hooked for the next game as a bit of a lesson.Pama Fou needs to learn to pass, especially to open players like Walker.
What did Morahan do?
Damn, these Fijians are good. 3 debutants, only 42 tournaments experience in their squad, and they play like they have all done 42 tournaments each.
Looked like a knee.
Utter nonsense. This event will build rapidly and will become a sellout within 2-4 years. Sunday's crowd will exceed 20000 and today's crowd will nudge towards 15000. That's a good result for the second year. The advertising this year has been better than last year (non-existant) but it still needs more. As others have said, it has a great carnival feel which fits in very well with the happy Gold Coast lifestyle. It will become a great event very soon.
Yeah - that has been their achilles heel for some time now and even when they won the tournament in Tokyo this year they had to work around the physical battle as the Wobs have to sometimes in XV man games they win.Australia have looked quite good, their combinations in attack are clicking quite well.. They still seem to be getting outmuscled at the breakdown though
If there were 15,000 today then they were all out the back. The stands were three quarters empty. They got better crouds in Adelaide.
Not sure what you mean by 'dodged a bullet'Hugh. I think it's a remarkable effort for any team to beat Fiji at Sevens. These guys have really benefitted from playing together as a team for some time now and a few are noticeably more developed than they were 12 months ago.We dodged a bullet there against FIJI, but as a reward we get to the knockout QF against Kenya who have looked impressive so far.
Tomorrow should be a beauty of a day rugby wise.
Hoping for a bigger crowd tomorrow. The numbers didn't seem to build from about mid afternoon onwards.
Not sure what you mean by 'dodged a bullet'Hugh. I think it's a remarkable effort for any team to beat Fiji at Sevens. These guys have really benefitted from playing together as a team for some time now and a few are noticeably more developed than they were 12 months ago.
Was very impressed with Lucas, Faalavu and McMahon.
Do you mean over the 2 days or roughly per day? Because Skilled Park only holds 27k.Actually Adelaide got 25500 in its first year and only grew to 31200 after four years. The Gold Coast attendance will be bigger than this by close of proceedings tomorrow (2nd year).